1 in 3 Americans Lives in 4 States

The U.S. appears to be a beehive of large population centers. One need only consider the large number of sports teams that exist in professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey.

Nevertheless, as in most countries, there is still is a considerable degree of population concentration.  To illustrate this point, consider the following surprising fact. One out of every three Americans lives in only four states – California, Texas, New York or Florida.

All four of those states have seafaring coastlines, on the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans or the Gulf of Mexico; or in Florida’s case, on both the Atlantic and the Gulf.

Two (N.Y. and Florida) are east of the Mississippi River and two (Texas and California) are west. The latter two share a border with Mexico. They also have energy riches.

Development of the Monterey shale-rock fossil-fuel deposit in California (between Los Angeles and San Francisco) would likely see that state surpass Texas in production. Monterey is believed to have a volume of reserves four times as great as the Bakken field in North Dakota.

In the accompanying table, it is easy to compare those four states with their 46 siblings and the District of Columbia. Three other criteria beyond resident estimations are employed –most recent population growth, unemployment rates and median household incomes.

The “unemployment rate” listing is a good place to start. Seven of the nation’s Top 10 oil-producing states have jobless figures lower than the national average (6.1%) – North Dakota (2.7%), Utah (3.5%); Wyoming (4.0%), Oklahoma (4.5%), Louisiana (5.0%), Texas (5.1%) and Colorado (5.5%).

Several of the other low-jobless-rate states – Nebraska (3.5%), South Dakota (3.8%) and Minnesota (4.5%) lie in close proximity to where “booms” are underway.

California (7.4%), despite its energy wealth, is failing to meet the current national standard for unemployment (6.1%). Energy-rich Alaska (6.4%) and New Mexico (6.5%) are also on the wrong side of that benchmark.

But they’re doing better than 48th-place Michigan (7.5%), where Detroit is tied up in bankruptcy proceedings, and 49th-place Nevada (7.7%). Construction jobs in Las Vegas vanished when that city suffered the country’s most severe residential real estate crash.

There is another critical factor that is having an outsized impact on the state rankings. With respect to median household incomes, the dominant states have a preponderance of positions requiring people with higher levels of education. They gravitate to top-paying jobs in IT, academia, financial/insurance and government services.

Maryland, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia and D.C. are replete with such work. Colorado, in ninth position, is also a bastion of federal government employment. The armed forces presence in the region (e.g., NORAD in Colorado Springs) also carries a sophisticated staffing standard.

At the bottom of the household-income ranking, the heavy weighting of southeastern states ‒ Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama ‒ is startling.

For a few final words, let’s return to the four most populous U.S. states referred to in the headline and discussed at the beginning of this article. Do Canadians share any defining relationships with them?

Absolutely! In winter, many of us become “snowbirds” in Florida. We travel to New York for shopping and live theater. Texans and Albertans are oilmen. And all of our comedians move to California.