How Dependent Is New Jersey On The Federal Government?

New Jersey depends the least on the federal government to help fund its economy more than any other state in the country.

WalletHub conducted an analysis to study to determine what states were the most and least dependent on the federal government. It used four factors to come up with a ranking of all 50 states:

• Return on Taxes Paid to the Federal Government
• Federal Funding as a Percentage of State Revenue
• Number of Federal Employees per 1,000 Residents
• Number of Civilian Non-Defense Federal Employees per 1,000 Residents

Nearly 27 percent of the the state’s revenue is supplied using federal funds, good for 10th in the United States. The Garden State has 3.8 federal employees, the fifth lowest, and less than 1.8 federal civilian non-defense federal employees, per 1,000 residents.

You can see the full results in the map below:

The five least-dependent states, along with New Jersey, are: Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Kansas. The most dependent were Montana, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and New Mexico.

One irony pointed out by WalletHub was the discrepancy in how states voted vs. how reliant they were on the federal government.

States that voted Republican in the 2012 election, whose party preaches less dependance on the government, had an average rank of 33.2. States that tend to vote Democrat had an average rank of 18.3.

See the full list, methodology and analysis at WalletHub.