Median Household Income by State

Median household income is the single most requested number in American economic geography, and it varies enormously depending on where you draw the state line. At the top, a typical household in Massachusetts earns $103,960 a year. At the bottom, a typical household in Mississippi earns $56,447. That is a gap of more than $47,000 between the same statistic in two states, and it shapes everything from federal funding formulas to the cost of a mortgage. Below is every state ranked, using the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.

The District of Columbia reports $109,870, higher than any state, but it is a single city rather than a state and sits outside the state ranking proper. Among the 50 states, Massachusetts leads and Mississippi trails.

Every state ranked by median household income

District of Columbia, ranked separately as a federal district, reports $109,870.

The richest states cluster in two regions

Four of the five highest-earning states sit in the Northeast: Massachusetts ($103,960), Maryland ($103,678), New Jersey ($103,556), and, a little further down, New Hampshire and Connecticut. These are the states built around the Boston-to-Washington megalopolis, where dense concentrations of finance, biotech, higher education, and federal employment pull the median up.

The other pole is the West. Hawaii ($100,389), California ($99,122), Washington ($98,141), Colorado ($95,470), and Utah ($95,166) all clear $95,000. In California and Washington the tech economy is the obvious driver; in Hawaii, high incomes travel alongside an even higher cost of living, which is the reminder this table always needs. A large median household income does not mean money goes further. It often means the opposite.

The poorest states are a Deep South and Appalachian belt

The bottom ten is geographically tight. Mississippi ($56,447), West Virginia ($59,608), Louisiana ($60,756), Arkansas ($60,773), Kentucky ($63,726), and Alabama ($63,999) form a continuous band across the Deep South and central Appalachia. These are states where the industrial and agricultural economies that once anchored middle-class wages thinned out over the past half century, and where the replacement service economy pays less. The pattern is old and stubborn: many of these same states sat at the bottom of the income table decades ago.

The middle is where most Americans live

The interesting thing about the ranking is how flat the middle is. From about rank 20 to rank 42, the median moves only from roughly $80,000 down to $70,000, a $10,000 spread across 23 states. Texas ($78,476), Florida ($74,568), Georgia ($77,353), North Carolina ($72,388), and Ohio ($71,389), five of the most populous states in the country, all sit within this band. The big gaps are at the extremes; the great American middle is genuinely a middle.

State medians also hide enormous variation inside their borders. Texas contains both some of the richest and some of the poorest counties in the country, and the same is true of California and New York. For the county-level picture, see our breakdown of the highest and lowest median household income counties, which shows spreads far wider than anything at the state level.

How to read this number

Median household income is the income of the household exactly in the middle of the distribution, half of households earn more and half earn less. It is a better everyday measure than the average, which a handful of very high earners can distort. It is not adjusted for cost of living, household size, or taxes, so a $100,000 median in Hawaii and a $100,000 median in a low-cost interior state describe very different standards of living. Use it to compare places on the same footing, not as a verdict on how comfortable life is in any one of them.

To go deeper, browse the full income ranking for states, which includes a year selector back to 1990, or line up any two states side by side with the compare tool. You can also download the complete data as a CSV from the ranking page.

Sources

All figures are median household income from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, the most recent release. The full state ranking, including historical snapshots and a downloadable dataset, is at highest median household income by state.