Which state has the most workers at places people visit?
🔎 Skip to the answer (ranking table)Guess
Think of the jobs a visitor actually sees: the ride operator, the hotel clerk, the museum guide, the cook flipping pancakes at 7am. The Census keeps all of those in one group — arts, entertainment and recreation, plus hotels, plus restaurants. Out of every 100 people with a civilian job, which state has the most working in that group? (People serving in the armed forces are counted separately, so they are not in this table.) Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
Everybody visits Florida. Florida! 🐾
Answer
The real order is…
Nevada — 20.1 out of every 100 civilian workers, or about 1 in 5. Across the country the figure is 8.9, so Nevada runs at more than twice the national rate and 1.32× the next state, Hawaii at 15.2. Now the surprise: Florida is only fifth (11.1), California eighth (9.8), and New York — a state millions of people fly to — sits far down the list at 8.4, below the national figure. (We give the number instead of a place number here, because states printed this close together can be tied.) The answer is what the question measures: a share. A state can hold a great many of these jobs and still sit low here, because it also holds a great many of every other kind of job, and the share is one divided by the other. Tiny Rhode Island, at 12.8, lands third — good proof that this is not a list of big states. Why Rhode Island in particular? This table prints only the answer to the division, never the two numbers that made it, so it cannot tell you.
📚 Background Three things EIA's state profile says about Nevada, each a fact on its own. Where the people are: “Almost three-fourths of the state's residents live in Clark County in southern Nevada, which includes the city of Las Vegas.” What much of the work is: “Las Vegas and Reno are tourist destinations for gaming and entertainment, and the leisure and hospitality industry is the state's largest employer.” And who owns the ground: “The federal government owns about four-fifths of Nevada's land, the largest share of any state.” EIA is writing about energy, not about this quiz's number, and it never links those three to the Census industry share — so neither do we. Hold them as pieces of the same puzzle. So why doesn't Florida or California win? Because this is a share, not a count. A big state can hold a great many of these jobs and still sit low on this list, because it also holds a great many of every other kind of job — and a share asks what fraction of all the state's work one group takes up. So a state can top this list without being big: what decides it is how large this one group is next to everything else the state's workers do. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, Nevada State Energy Profile — Analysis (last updated June 18, 2026)) (opens in a new tab)
Everybody visits Florida. Florida! 🐾
Compare
Workers in arts, entertainment, recreation, hotels and restaurants (% of civilian employed people 16+, ACS 2024)
Most: Nevada (20.1 %); fewest: Iowa (6.9 %) — about 1 civilian worker in 14. The same jobs exist there too; they just take a smaller slice of all the work.
Note: from the American Community Survey, which the Census Bureau sends to a sample of addresses, not to everyone — so every number here is an estimate published with a give-or-take, and two states within a few tenths of each other may really be tied. Nevada's lead is not one of those: its give-or-take (±0.8) and Hawaii's (±0.9) do not overlap, so Nevada stays on top even after both published margins of error are applied. Rhode Island's give-or-take is wider (±1.2), so read third place gently. “Industry” means the kind of business a person works for, not the task they do — a cook, a cleaner and an accountant at the same hotel all count here. The table counts civilian workers aged 16 and over; people on active duty in the armed forces are counted in a different table. The 50 states are shown; the District of Columbia is not ranked. U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-year estimates.
One in five! That's a lot of ride operators 🐾
Recap
🏅 Today's discovery
🏅 Nevada is the USA's #1!
🐕 States in Numbers
Quiz a friend!
📋 See the ranking table (top 50)
| Rank | State | Value |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Nevada | 20.1 % |
| #2 | Hawaii | 15.2 % |
| #3 | Rhode Island | 12.8 % |
| #4 | Montana | 11.2 % |
| #5 | Florida | 11.1 % |
| #6 | New Mexico | 10.5 % |
| #7 | Arizona | 10.1 % |
| #8 | California | 9.8 % |
| #9 | Louisiana | 9.6 % |
| #10 | Tennessee | 9.3 % |
| #11 | Colorado | 9.1 % |
| #11 | Wyoming | 9.1 % |
| #13 | Delaware | 9 % |
| #13 | Michigan | 9 % |
| #13 | Mississippi | 9 % |
| #13 | Oklahoma | 9 % |
| #17 | Oregon | 8.9 % |
| #17 | South Dakota | 8.9 % |
| #17 | Vermont | 8.9 % |
| #20 | Georgia | 8.8 % |
| #20 | South Carolina | 8.8 % |
| #22 | North Carolina | 8.7 % |
| #22 | Utah | 8.7 % |
| #22 | West Virginia | 8.7 % |
| #25 | Idaho | 8.5 % |
| #25 | Illinois | 8.5 % |
| #25 | Ohio | 8.5 % |
| #25 | Texas | 8.5 % |
| #29 | Missouri | 8.4 % |
| #29 | New York | 8.4 % |
| #31 | Alaska | 8.3 % |
| #31 | Indiana | 8.3 % |
| #31 | Virginia | 8.3 % |
| #34 | Alabama | 8.2 % |
| #35 | Maine | 8.1 % |
| #35 | Washington | 8.1 % |
| #37 | Kentucky | 7.9 % |
| #37 | Maryland | 7.9 % |
| #39 | Arkansas | 7.8 % |
| #39 | Connecticut | 7.8 % |
| #39 | Massachusetts | 7.8 % |
| #39 | New Jersey | 7.8 % |
| #39 | North Dakota | 7.8 % |
| #44 | Nebraska | 7.7 % |
| #45 | Pennsylvania | 7.6 % |
| #45 | Wisconsin | 7.6 % |
| #47 | New Hampshire | 7.5 % |
| #48 | Minnesota | 7.4 % |
| #49 | Kansas | 7.3 % |
| #50 | Iowa | 6.9 % |
| 🇺🇸 USA (national figure) | 8.9 % |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2024 (ACS 1-year estimates))
Sources
Data as of: 2024 (ACS 1-year estimates)
U.S. Census Bureau: American Community Survey 2024 1-year profile DP03_0043PE (industry — arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services) (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-20) — Official published survey estimates (the committed raw file is the API response, unchanged). The American Community Survey goes to a sample of addresses, not to every home, so every figure here is an estimate published with a margin of error. “Industry” describes the kind of business a person works for, not the task the person does, and every civilian worker lands in exactly one industry row. The published base is the civilian employed population 16 years and over, so people on active duty in the armed forces are not counted here. The figures cover the 50 states; the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are not ranked here.
↳ On data.census.gov, open profile table “DP03” for 2024 and read DP03_0043PE (Industry — Arts, entertainment, and recreation, and accommodation and food services) by state.