Some places have plenty of residents with plenty of money.
Some have many new residents with new money.
Those people either moved to a new place, and may have left their old financial professionals behind, or they may suddenly be earning a lot more in the same place. They may have suddenly paid off the phone bill, the power bill and even the credit cards, and suddenly have cash to give their cousins a loan, invest in designer sneakers, or even save for retirement.
The U.S. Census Bureau provides some hints about where the new money is flowing in the recently released batch of 1-year results for 2024 from the American Community Survey program.
One table, table B19001, shows population broken down by household income category. The top income category is for households with $200,000 or more in annual income. At press time, a user could view the number of households with income of $200,000 or more in each state, in each county, in each U.S. House district, and in each metropolitan statistical area or micropolitan statistical area.
We used the table to identify the metro areas with the fastest-growing population in the $200,000-and-over income category. For a look at the 12 large metro areas with the biggest gains in high-income households between 2019 and 2024, see the gallery accompanying this article.
What it means: The places in this gallery tend to be attractive areas that have traditionally been overshadowed by louder neighbors.
Methods: We started creating the gallery by filtering the American Community Survey B19001 table for metropolitan areas that were in the table both in 2019 and 2024. We then excluded data for the Boise, Idaho, area and some other metro areas with boundaries that have changed significantly in recent years.
That left us with a list of about 300 metro areas.
Those areas had a total of 74.3 million households in 2024. About 10.5 million, or 14.1%, of those households had an annual income of $200,000 or higher.
For all metro areas, the share of households in the $200,000-plus income category ranged from 0.2%, in Guayama, Puerto Rico, to 42.6%, in the San Jose, California, area.
To get the table down to a more manageable size, and to try to reduce the impact of random data fluctuations, we then narrowed the list down to include only metro areas that ranked in the top 50 in terms of total population.
For metro areas in the top 50, the share of households in the $200,000-plus income category ranged from 6.8%, in the Lakeland, Florida, area, to 42.6%, in the San Jose area.
The increase in the number of households in the $200,000-plus income category between 2009 and 2024 ranged from 22.2%, in New Orleans, to almost 175%, in one place in Florida that's regarded as a boomtown.
Credit: Adobe Stock
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