15 States With the Worst Economies: 2024

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When it comes to contributing to U.S. economic growth, some states outperform their peers, often by a wide margin. Consider that California, Texas, New York and Florida rank as the fifth, ninth, 12th and 19th biggest economies in the world.

Top-performing states, according to a recent report by personal finance website WalletHub, have high average income and low unemployment rates, and promote growth by welcoming new businesses and investing in new technology to help the state meet future challenges and become more efficient.

The worst-performing ones fall down in many of these areas. To find out how much each states contributes to moving the U.S. economy forward, WalletHub compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia across these key dimensions:

Economic activity, including change in GDP (2023 vs. 2022), state gross public debt as percent of GDP and startup activity
Economic health, including unemployment rate, share of uninsured population, median annual household income adjusted for cost of living and foreclosure rate
Innovation potential, including share of jobs in STEM employment, non-industry research and development investment amount as share of GDP and entrepreneurial activity

Researchers evaluated these dimensions using 28 relevant metrics, and graded each one on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest economic performance. They then determined each state and the District’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score.

See the gallery for the 15 worst state economies this year, according to WalletHub.

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