This County Is The Richest In Massachusetts

No surprises here: Norfolk County, home to Brookline, Medfield, Wellesley and the like, is the richest county in Massachusetts. That's according to 24/7 Wall St., a financial news and opinion site that said the county's median household income of $95,668 gives it top billing.

Norfolk County's median household income is 29 percent higher than the state's median household income of $74,167. The poverty rate in the county is 6.5 percent, and its unemployment rate as of October was just 2.7 percent.

To put Norfolk County's affluence into context: Only 6.3 households nationwide earn at least $200,000 a year. In Norfolk County, that number is 16.9 percent - certainly the highest in Massachusetts and one of the highest numbers in the country.

24/7 Wall St. also factored in Norfolk County's college attainment rate, which indicates that 52.5 percent of adults have at least a bachelor's degrees. That's far higher than the statewide number of 42.1 percent, which is the highest in the nation.

Norfolk County is so wealthy that this $69 million home is for sale there. In fact, the sprawling estate was going for $90 million as recently as 2016.

See the more information from 24/7 Wall St. here.

Across the country, the typical household in the wealthiest counties earned between $58,000 and $130,000 a year, with Loudoun County, Virginia, coming in as the richest county in America. The authors said Loudoun’s proximity to Washington, D.C., and access to “countless jobs” help bolster its strong unemployment rate of just 2.3 percent, well below the national rate of 3.8 percent. Moreover, many of those jobs are high-skilled — and high-paying.

About 60 percent of adults in Loudoun County have earned at least a bachelor’s degree — about twice as many as the country overall — and the typical household earns about $130,000 a year, the highest income of any county by more than $12,000.Other counties in the six-figure income club include Howard County, Maryland ($115,576); Douglas County, Colorado ($111,154); Hunterdon County, New Jersey ($110,969); Los Alamos County, New Mexico ($110,190); Santa Clara County, California ($106,761); Nassau County, New York ($105,744); Williamson County, Tennessee ($103,543); and Delaware County, Ohio ($100,229).

Meanwhile, Arizona’s Maricopa County earned the lowest amount out of all the wealthiest counties at $58,580. That’s about $5,000 more than what the typical Arizona household earns. Interestingly, Maricopa County is actually the only Arizona county that earns more than the national median of $58,580.

“While it is the wealthiest in the state, the county’s median of $58,580 is only slightly higher than that of the nation,” the authors noted.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Realtor.com photo