Daily Maps · September 24, 2026 · Archive

Counties where federal contract dollars rival every paycheck in town

Contract Dollars Relative to Local Wages is shown for the 2,690 counties that report it. The national median county sits at $0.007407; the range runs from $0 to $14.9855. Highest: Spotsylvania County, VA ($14.9855); Chattahoochee County, GA ($3.72999); Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region, CT ($2.28815); Sagadahoc County, ME ($2.06544). Lowest: Clinton County, IN ($0); Bowman County, ND ($0); Fayette County, OH ($0); Madison County, IA ($0). Among counties over half a million people, the highest are Fairfax County, VA ($0.568209); Pima County, AZ ($0.494874); Tarrant County, TX ($0.43844). Sources: FY2025 contract obligations / BLS QCEW 2025 total wages paid in the county; a scale for exposure, not a dependence measure.

How to read this map

A county is drawn solid navy when it falls inside every range the map sets, dotted when it misses one, and hatched when it reports no figure for one of the measures, so a hatched county is neither a match nor a miss. On a heatmap, darker means a higher value and a faded county sits outside the range. The count in the title is the count on the day the map ran.

The figures are the same ones behind every county page on this site: Census population and household income, Zillow home values, HUD fair market rents, County Health Rankings measures of crime and health, NOAA temperatures and USDA amenity scores, each stored with its publication year and listed below for this map. "Play with this map" opens the live county map with these ranges already set, so you can move a handle and watch the count change; "Make your own" starts from a blank map.

Sources

FY2025 contract obligations / BLS QCEW 2025 total wages paid in the county; a scale for exposure, not a dependence measure

Solid navy marks counties inside every range on this map, dotted counties miss one or all of them, and hatched counties have no figure for that measure. On a heatmap, darker means higher and faded counties fall outside the range.