The counties where most households earn six figures

About 53.3 percent of American households earn $100,000 or more. In Loudoun County, Virginia, 84.2 percent do. In Robeson County, North Carolina, 31.1 percent of households earn under $25,000.

Five of the top ten are Washington-area counties: Loudoun, Fairfax, Stafford, Howard, and, just outside the list, Arlington and Prince William. The federal government and its contractors pay professional salaries across a wide band of occupations, and the region's households are unusually likely to have two such earners.

Santa Clara and San Mateo are the technology entry. Both sit above 75 percent, and both have median home values that make a six-figure household income close to a requirement rather than a mark of affluence. Somerset County, New Jersey and Nassau County, New York are the finance and pharmaceutical suburbs of New York.

Douglas County, Colorado and Forsyth County, Georgia are the two that are neither. Both are outer-ring suburbs, of Denver and Atlanta respectively, that grew rapidly by attracting exactly one kind of household: married couples with children and two professional incomes.

The $100,000 threshold has not moved, but its meaning has. When just over half of all American households clear it, the figure has stopped marking the top of the distribution and now sits near the middle. In Santa Clara County, where 76.8 percent of households earn six figures, the median home value runs well over $1 million, so a $100,000 household income does not buy a house.

The bottom of the distribution tells a separate story. Nationally 14.6 percent of households earn under $25,000. Robeson County, North Carolina is highest among large counties at 31.1 percent, followed by Bronx County, New York at 30.7 percent and three Louisiana parishes: Caddo at 28.0 percent, Orleans at 27.1 percent, and Ouachita at 27.0 percent.

Those two lists barely intersect with the inequality rankings. A county can have many rich households and few poor ones, like Loudoun, and score low on inequality; or few of both, like Paulding County, Georgia. The counties that combine large numbers at both ends are the ones covered in the most and least unequal counties.

Median income by county, which is a different question from the share above a threshold, is in median household income by county.

Sources

Figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, table B19001 (household income in the past 12 months). Income is in nominal dollars and is not adjusted for local cost of living. Counties shown have at least 100,000 residents. National figures are population-weighted averages across states.