Several states have climbed the rankings in a new index of “financial distress,” with those carried by President Donald Trump in 2024 dominating the top of the list.<\/p>\n
An analysis<\/a> by the personal finance<\/a> website WalletHub has found that nine states that voted Republican in the presidential election feature in its top 10 for “financial distress”\u2014a composite measure based on credit scores, bankruptcy filings and other markers of fiscal difficulty.<\/p>\n “Americans have faced significant financial challenges in recent years, as inflation<\/a>, shifting unemployment<\/a> levels, public health emergencies and natural disasters have made it more difficult for many households to stay on top of their bills,” WalletHub wrote in its study, released Wednesday. “As a result, a growing number of people have experienced financial distress.”<\/p>\n Read More on U.S.<\/p>\n Which States Are the Most \u2018Financially Distressed\u2019?<\/p>\n To identify the states with the greatest share of residents in financial distress, WalletHub compared all 50 across several different categories, including credit scores; the number and share of credit accounts in forbearance; change in the number of bankruptcy filings; as well as search interest for terms like “debt<\/a>” and “loans.”<\/p>\n The resulting rankings can be seen on the map below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Based on WalletHub\u2019s methodology, the top 10 most financially distressed states in 2026 were:<\/p>\n Thanks to a combination of strong credit scores and relatively low numbers of accounts in forbearance, among other factors, the following states boast the smallest share of residents in financial distress:<\/p>\n How the Rankings Have Changed<\/p>\n WalletHub publishes its rankings annually, and Newsweek has compared those released over the past two years to see which states have seen the sharpest increases and drops in their relative levels of financial distress.<\/p>\n Biggest Movers From 2024 to 2026<\/p>\n Biggest risers<\/strong><\/p>\n Biggest fallers<\/strong><\/p>\n According to WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo, Kansas has steadily climbed the rankings over the past two years as “several metrics deteriorated at the same time.”<\/p>\n Lupo told Newsweek that the Sunflower State saw a significant increase in the number of people with accounts in distress, a 12 percent jump in personal bankruptcy filings, and that Kansas now also ranks second nationally for Google searches related to “debt” and fourth for “loans”\u2014which he said points to “elevated demand for financial assistance relative to previous years.”<\/p>\n Lupo said that some of the movement could be attributed to methodological changes\u2014such as the replacement of TransUnion credit score data with WalletHub\u2019s own proprietary data set\u2014but that the magnitude of many shifts “reflects genuine changes in the underlying data.”<\/p>\n As for Michigan, which experienced the opposite and dropped from first to 46th place in only two years, Lupo told Newsweek that the state benefited from “far fewer financially distressed borrowers than in previous years” and that average credit scores saw significant improvements.<\/p>\n Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly<\/a> and James Debens<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several states have climbed the rankings in a new index of “financial distress,” with those carried by President…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":942071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,276,26448,79,525,7550,723,92159,4353,26621,13670,1818,266,19785,357,353,2741,214,991,519,2737,3036,358,766,67,132,68,2742,2058,1398,1669],"class_list":["post-942070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-california","tag-debt","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-finances","tag-florida","tag-freemium","tag-georgia","tag-hawaii","tag-idaho","tag-illinois","tag-inflation","tag-kansas","tag-kentucky","tag-louisiana","tag-maine","tag-michigan","tag-new-hampshire","tag-north-carolina","tag-rhode-island","tag-south-carolina","tag-texas","tag-unemployment","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-vermont","tag-washington","tag-wisconsin","tag-wyoming"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116937857878854366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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