Our 2025 Financial State of the States report paints a stark picture of fiscal irresponsibility across the U.S., with unfunded pension liabilities emerging as one of the most pressing threats to long-term state solvency.
These liabilities represent promised retirement benefits to public employees—such as teachers, firefighters, and state workers—that governments have committed to but failed to adequately fund. By shortchanging pension contributions today, states are effectively borrowing from the future, shifting massive costs onto tomorrow's taxpayers. This practice not only undermines balanced budgets but also erodes public trust in government accounting. Drawing from the most recent audited financial reports (primarily fiscal year 2024, with some states using 2023 data due to delays), we reveal a collective national shortfall that underscores the urgency for reform. Read more
Chicago's unfunded pension benefits continue to rise way above the national average for the top U.S. cities, growing from $20 billion in 2014 to over $37 billion in 2023. Funding of pensions and OPEB has been a financial and poltical problem for years in Chicago, with no end in sight. READ MORE
Across all 50 states from 2019 to 2023, the average percentage change in intergovernmental revenue per capita (the most efficient way to compare states) was a striking 58 percent! The percentage change ranged from 30.6 percent in Idaho to 114 percent in Oklahoma. Since the lion’s share of intergovernmental revenue to states comes from the federal government, and most of the increase since 2019 was Covid aid, the question is how will states make up the difference when the Covid grant monies run out. Presumably, the states will have to raise taxes or cut services significantly. States have become used to that extra revenue. Will they be prepared for what comes next?
Personal income per capita in the United States grew on average $12,816 or 23.9 percent since 2019, which certainly sounds like a big jump. However, in that same time period personal consumption per capita also rose significantly; on average between 2019 and 2023 (the most recent data available) personal consumption spending went up 25.9 percent. These figures are not adjusted for inflation, but they show that spending increased more than personal income.
The chart below illustrates three different measures of the federal deficit. You choose: Which number do you like best?
Between 2019 and 2024 public school enrollment in the U.S. decreased by over 1.3 million. The three states that lost the most were California, New York and Illinois. The states that gained the most students were Texas, Florida and South Carolina. This is not all that surprising since these three states have also ranked among the states to have the largest percentage increases in population in recent years, while the biggest losers have consistently ranked among the states to lose the most residents. There are, of course, myriad reasons that overall student enrollment has declined--too many to speculate about here--but the Covid pandemic may have been the most important factor.
For more information about public school enrollment go to Data-Z.org, where you can compare states going back to 1999. You can also explore our many demographic, economic and financlal data series for all 50 states. READ MORE
What state consumes the most turkey per person on Thanksgiving? Why, California, of course--the largest state in the Union. Besides turkeys consumed, California also has the most federal taxpayers, according to the IRS. However, in 2023 California lost the most tax filers, 1,277,731 to be precise. No other state lost tax filers.
And where did those tax filers go? Well, maybe they wll be eating turkey in Florida and Texas, which both saw an increase of over one million tax filers. No other states came even close to gaining that many taxpayers. So is California a turkey state in more ways than one? READ MORE
Truth in Accounting's most recent Financial State of the States, which came out on October 3, 2024, shows that only three out of the seven swing states had a Taxpayer SurplusTM according to their ACFR data for 2023. All the swing states had a Taxpayer BurdenTM between 2014 and 2020. The states that switched from having a burden to having a surplus were Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. The other four swing states--Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania--maintained their burden status at least through 2022. Two of those states, Arizona and Nevada, did not release their financial statements in time to be included in our report.
According to the Mercatus Center, the state of New York came in second highest in terms of state regulations. The Center quantifies the number of regulations because their "research indicates that regulatory accumulation worsens economic conditions, inadvertently increasing poverty rates, destroying jobs, and raising prices. The path to reversing these trends is clear: Improve regulations by reducing their number. Our State RegData project has produced "snapshots" of state regulations that can help policymakers engage in that process."
In addition, New York ranks highest in terms of lawyers per 10,000 residents according to the American Bar Association and TIA calculations. It has 95.72 lawyers per 10,000 residents, while Massachusetts, the next highest state, has 61.06 lawyers per 10,000 residents. Is this a coincidence, a correlation, or a cause? You decide and check the numbers for your state at Data.Z.org.
Timeliness of an annual report is the number of days between a city or state's fiscal year-end and the date it publishes its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). For the publishing date, TIA uses the date on the letter of transmittal, which is typically found near the beginning of the ACFR.
It is crucial for citizens to have their government’s financial information in a timely manner. Due to the tardiness of Arizona, California, Iowa, Oklahoma and Nevada in releasing their financial reports, we were unable to include the newest data in our Financial State of the States 2023 report which was published in October 2023. In mid July 2024 we were finally able to update our data on Data-z.org to include the 2022 data from those five delinquent states.