Unbanked America

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Lately you’ve probably heard a lot about bankers. What what about the bankees?

Dollars to doughnuts.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, across the country 7.7 percent of households don’t have a checking or savings account (that is, they are “unbanked”). Another 17.9 percent have checking or savings accounts, but they still rely on alternative financial services like check cashing, payday loans and pawnshops, which typically have very unfavorable terms for borrowers.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has put together state-by-state information on what share of people use the traditional banking system, shown in the interactive map below.

Click on any state to see what share of its households don’t access the traditional banking system. You’ll also see how much it costs to maintain a checking account and make an overdraft transfer in that state.

As you might expect, higher fees discourage families from using banks. As the Pew study cites, the 2009 F.D.I.C. National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households found that 31 percent of households that dropped a bank account said they did so because of service charges, minimum balance requirements or overdraft fees.

Mississippians are most cut off from the traditional banking system: 16.4 percent of households in the state do not have a checking or savings account. On the other hand, almost every household in Utah uses the traditional banking system; just 1.7 percent of households there are unbanked.

New York Metro Area Has Highest Inequality in Country

It’s probably no wonder that the “Occupy” movement began with Wall Street: the New York metropolitan area has the highest inequality in the country, according to a new report from the Census Bureau.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The report, by Daniel H. Weinberg, analyzed income data at various geographical levels and found that the region encompassing New York, northern New Jersey, Long Island and parts of Pennsylvania had the highest income inequality of any large metro area.

Dollars to doughnuts.

New York State also has the highest income inequality of all 50 states (although Washington, D.C., was worse).

Below is a map showing three measures of income inequality for each state: the Gini index (which ranges from 0.0, when all households have equal shares of income, to 1.0, when one household has all the income and the rest has none); a ratio of household income at the 90th percentile to that at the 10th percentile; and a ratio of household income at the 95th percentile to that at the 20th.

In all cases, a higher value means greater inequality.

After New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have among the most unequal income distributions. At the low end are New Hampshire, Alaska and Utah, which is the most economically homogenous state in the nation.

Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City, also has the lowest income inequality of any major American metro area. The most unequal, as mentioned above, is New York, followed by Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.

Mr. Weinberg’s report also has inequality measures down to the neighborhood level, which I recommend checking out. Remember, though, that fewer people are surveyed in such small places, so the margin of error is much greater.

The North Dakota Miracle

Forget the Texas Miracle. Let’s instead take a look at North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest job growth rate in the country.

According to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today, North Dakota had an unemployment rate of just 3.3 percent in July — that’s just over a third of the national rate (9.1 percent), and about a quarter of the rate of the state with the highest joblessness (Nevada, at 12.9 percent).

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

North Dakota has had the lowest unemployment in the country (or was tied for the lowest unemployment rate in the country) every single month since July 2008.

Dollars to doughnuts.

Its healthy job market is also reflected in its payroll growth numbers. North Dakota had 19,700 more jobs in July than it did during the same month last year.

That probably sounds like small potatoes when you look at Texas, which had 269,500 more jobs last month than it did a year earlier. But Texas is a much bigger, more populous state, and had many more jobs to begin with. In terms of percentage growth, North Dakota has a better record: year over year, its payrolls grew by 5.2 percent. Texas came in second, with an increase of 2.6 percent.

Why is North Dakota doing so well? For one of the same reasons that Texas has been doing well: oil.