US Counties With the Lowest Economy Scores

3,143 US counties ranked by economy score, from lowest to highest. First are Kusilvak Census Area, AK (-1.28), Oglala Lakota County, SD (-1.19) and Buffalo County, SD (-1.09). The middle one of the 3,143 has 0.818.

What this measures

Four income measures from four agencies: income per person, middle household income (an estimate from a statistical model), personal income per person, and average adjusted gross income on tax returns. Read it as four ways of measuring income, not as a broad economic summary. It moves very closely with middle household income (a link of 0.91 on a scale where 1 is perfect), and the site already adjusts for that. So a link with this score and a link with income are close to the same question. Source: .

A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 lowest counties

More on economy score

• US Counties With the Highest Economy Scores
• Economy score by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.