Financial pressures hit residents harder in some states than others nationwide amid rising inflation, changing unemployment levels and other factors.
Kansas ranks as the state with the highest levels of financial distress based on credit scores, distressed accounts, bankruptcy filings and search trends, reports WalletHub.
The state posted a nearly 12% rise in non-business bankruptcies over the past year while residents run high volumes of online searches for debt and loan terms.
Louisiana, Florida, Texas and South Carolina follow closely behind. About 12% of Louisianans have a credit account in forbearance or deferred payments, the highest of any state in the nation. The state also had the highest number of distressed accounts per person.
Looking more closely at Florida, WalletHub says residents in the state had the second-largest increase in the share of people with distressed accounts between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, at nearly 19%. Also, nearly 8.7% of people living in the state had distressed accounts between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, representing the third-highest overall share in the country.
Maine ranks as the least financially stressed state thanks to stronger average credit scores, fewer distressed accounts and minimal search activity for financial hardship terms.
Rhode Island, Hawaii, Vermont and Michigan round out the five least-stressed states, highlighting strong performances in New England and the Great Lakes regions.
WalletHub examined nine metrics across six overall categories, including average credit scores, changes in the number of bankruptcy filings from March 2025 to March 2026 and search data on debt- and loan-related queries, to produce the rankings.
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