The Citizen Economic Index, state by state
Each bar is one state. It shows how many weeks a typical household must work to pay five bills for a year. The bills are rent, groceries, gas, a car and health care. Pay here means take-home pay, after federal taxes. For the whole country, it took 25.5 weeks in 2025. Rent alone took 13.0 of those weeks. The switch under the map shows rent alone. Press play to watch the years go by. Click a state to see its counties and cities.
Bar height: weeks of take-home pay for a year of the same basic life (rent, groceries, gas, a car, health care)
Groceries, gas, the car and health care cost the national average in every state for now; rent and pay are local.
State color: the governor's party on July 1 Republican Democratic Independent or other No governor (D.C.) White band on a bar: the U.S. figure, 25.5 weeks
2025, weeks of take-home pay for the same basic life: highest Mississippi at 30.1 weeks, lowest New Hampshire at 21.5 weeks.
Who held office on July 1, 2025: President Donald Trump Republican. House and Senate: Republican majorities. Supreme Court: 6 of 9 justices appointed by Republican presidents. Governors: 27 Republican, 23 Democratic.
Note: State rent and pay come from each state's own Census figures. We adjust pay so the U.S. total matches the national number. Tax uses the national rate for that year. That means federal income and payroll tax, with no state tax yet. A state's color shows its governor's party on July 1 of the year shown. A county's color shows how it voted in the last presidential election before that year. A city's color shows its mayor's party, for the 50 largest cities. Gray means the party is not known. The colors do not say who caused the number to rise or fall. Source: Census Bureau, the census taken every ten years and the American Community Survey; offices from public records. How the map is built
Did political party play a role in this number?
No.
We found no clear sign that party moved this number.
We checked if the number moved differently when Democrats or Republicans held office. We wrote the test down first. Then we locked it, so it could not change after we saw the results.
- President. From 1981 to 2025, the number rose a little faster under Democratic presidents. The gap was 0.16 weeks a year. But chance alone makes a gap that big about 54 times in 100. The White House changed parties only 6 times, so this test can't see much.
- Governors. From 2001 to 2025, in 50 states, the number rose a little faster when a state had a Democratic governor. The gap was 0.06 weeks a year. That is about 2.5 hours of work. We ran three tests, so we raise the bar. With three tests, chance alone gives at least one gap this strong 10 to 13 times in 100. That is too often to call it real.
- Counties. From 2011 to 2025, we checked 862 counties. Counties that voted Democratic and counties that voted Republican for president moved about the same. The gap was close to zero.
How we decide. We use a number called a p-value. It says how often chance alone would make a gap this big if party made no difference. We call a link real only when that happens less than 5 times in 100.
What it means. We could not tell any link to party apart from chance. Other things may explain how this number moves. Finding them is the next step. We will do that research later, in good faith.
Fine print: gaps are Democrat minus Republican, per year of change, in weeks of take-home pay. Party is who held office on July 1 of the year before each change. The state and county tests remove each place's own trend and each year's national swing, and group errors by state. p-values: president 0.54 (shuffle test 0.53); governors 0.032 (shuffle test 0.041), 0.10 to 0.13 after the three-test correction (Holm); counties 0.97. A shuffle test swaps party histories at random. Only the president and governor tests have one. The governor value after the correction is a range. That test has two p-values, one from the model and one from the shuffle test. Each gives a slightly different value after the correction. Mayors were not tested: too few cities have a known party. Two separate runs of the plan got the same answers. Plan locked 2026-11-04 00:20 ET. Plan fingerprint, a code that changes if any word of the plan changes: ca7b8e1d3862.
The 50 states and D.C., 2025
Weeks of take-home pay for the same basic life, from most to fewest.
Download the state data (CSV) Download the county and city data (CSV)