No. 05 — Data & Tools
Millionaires by state
Every ranking of US states by millionaire households puts New Jersey first. Almost none of them agree on the number — New Jersey's share is reported anywhere from about 9.8% to 10.8% — and understanding why is more useful than any of the tables.
Why the rankings disagree with each other
Two compilers can count the same state and land two percentage points apart, because they are not counting the same thing. Some series count investable assets — brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, cash — and exclude the house entirely. Others count total net worth including home equity, net of debts. In a state where a paid-down house is routinely worth several hundred thousand dollars, that single definitional choice moves tens of thousands of households across the line in either direction. That is the whole explanation for New Jersey being reported at roughly 9.8% of households in one place and roughly 10.8% in another. Neither is wrong; they are answers to different questions.
Then there is the vintage problem. The series most articles still cite traces back to Phoenix Marketing International, which appears to have published no state millionaire ranking after its 2019 edition. A page dated this year may well be reprinting seven-year-old ordering under a fresh headline. Everything circulating for 2025 and 2026 comes from secondary aggregators applying their own methods to their own inputs, not from one primary release. The global millionaire counts are on much firmer ground by comparison, because a named institution publishes them annually on a stated methodology. State-level counts have no such publisher right now.
The ordering everyone agrees on
Strip away the decimals and one thing is stable across every compilation: the top of the list barely moves. New Jersey leads. Maryland follows. Connecticut, Massachusetts and Hawaii cluster just behind, trading places depending on whose definition is used.
| Position | State | What the compilations show |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | First in every compilation reviewed; share of millionaire households reported between roughly 9.8% and 10.8% |
| 2 | Maryland | Consistently second, close behind New Jersey |
| 3–5 | Connecticut, Massachusetts, Hawaii | A tight cluster; internal order changes with the definition used |
| Behind | The rest | Order shuffles substantially between compilations; the gap from the leaders narrows and the rankings stop being meaningful |
Read that as an ordering, not as measurements. The ranking is reliable; the percentages attached to it are not, and no honest version of this page can pretend otherwise. Attribute anything you see here to secondary compilations of 2025–2026 data using differing methods — that is genuinely all that exists.
Raw counts versus concentration
In absolute numbers, the leaders are California, Texas, New York and Florida. That fact carries almost no information. California has roughly ten times the households of Connecticut, so it will hold more millionaires even if a randomly chosen California household is poorer. A headcount answers "where do the most millionaires live", which is mostly a question about population size.
A per-capita rate answers something different and more interesting: pick a household at random in this state, what are the odds it holds seven figures? That is the measure that puts New Jersey and Maryland on top and leaves several enormous states mid-pack. When you see a state ranked first on one list and eleventh on another, check which of the two questions is being answered before drawing a conclusion. The same distinction runs through the national figures on millionaire statistics, where a $1,000,000 net worth puts a household somewhere around the top 15–18% nationally.
What actually drives the rankings
Three things explain nearly all of the state ordering, and none of them is a wealth-building technique.
Industry mix. New Jersey and Connecticut sit inside the New York finance commuter shed. Massachusetts runs on biotech, higher education and the venture capital attached to both. Maryland and northern Virginia run on defense contracting and federal salaries. High-paying industries concentrate geographically, and the households they employ concentrate with them.
Household income levels. The top concentration states are, with few exceptions, the top median household income states. Higher income supports higher contributions, and higher contributions over thirty years produce the balances these surveys count. That is the mechanism laid out in how to make a million dollars, playing out at the level of a state rather than a person.
Age structure. Net worth is cumulative, so a state with an older, settled, high-earning population reports more millionaires than a young state at the same income level. The steep age gradient behind this is documented in net worth by age. Notice what all three have in common: they are properties of a labour market and a population, not of a place you can move to and absorb.
Should you move?
Mostly, no — at least not for this reason. What builds a seven-figure net worth is the gap between what you earn and what you spend, not the size of the earning. High-concentration states have high housing costs, high property taxes and high everything else, which is precisely why the incomes there are high. Move from a $90,000 job to a $120,000 job and hand the entire $30,000 raise to a landlord and you have changed your address, not your savings rate, and your timeline to $1,000,000 is unchanged. Run any two scenarios through the millionaire calculator and the arithmetic is blunt about it: contributions drive the outcome, salary only matters through them.
Two honest exceptions. First, a genuine income jump that outpaces the cost-of-living increase does raise your savings rate, and that is real progress — the case for pursuing it is on increase your income. Second, state income tax differences are real money compounded over a working life; a few percentage points of income redirected into investments for thirty years is not a rounding error. But moving is a lever on income and costs, not a strategy in itself. The people crossing the line in New Jersey are doing the same thing as the people crossing it in Ohio, described the same way on financial independence: saving a consistent share of income into diversified investments for decades.
Source note: no primary source currently publishes millionaire households by state. Phoenix Marketing International, the provider historically cited, appears not to have updated its ranking since its 2019 edition; the 2025–2026 figures in circulation come from secondary compilations that differ in method and definition. Shares vary by compiler — the ordering is considerably more reliable than any individual percentage, which is why this page leads with the former.
Educational content, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Figures are illustrations based on stated assumptions, not guarantees; markets involve risk, including loss of principal.