America’s Richest Counties

Governing Magazine of April 2014, page 49, published the chart on the left. It lists America’s richest counties. The results are completely against what I would have intuitively guessed, with most counties on the list corresponding to the metropolitan areas of New York, Washington, DC, Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area. I was very wrong.

Most of the counties on this list are in North Dakota.

North Dakota is one of only four states that I have never even visited (the others are Maine, West Virginia and Louisiana).

Looking down the list, there is clearly a swath across the Midwest plains, from North Dakota on down, that represents the oil and natural gas boom of the last few years.

I have also read that rents are correspondingly high in those places. Who would have thought that it takes thousands of dollars to rent a two-bedroom apartment in some small towns in North Dakota?

Young men looking for manual labor jobs with high pay don’t have to go to Alaska anymore (as they did when I was young). Apparently North Dakota is the place.

Now I want to go and check it out.