Community Snapshot
Working Class Country counties are heavily clustered in specific rural communities in the eastern half of the United States including Appalachia, the Ozarks and the upper-Midwest.
Home to 8.5 million people, Working Class Country is blue-collar America with a rural overlay. These counties generally don’t rely on agriculture but rather exist as small service economies with some small manufacturing. Their average median household income of $42,400 sits about $13,000 below the national median, and the percentage of people with a college degree, 16.4%, is roughly half the national average. Working Class Country counties tend to be older than the nation at large: About 21% of the population in the type are older than age 65. Nationally that figure is 15.6%. Violent crimes rates are low as are home costs.