Wayne County, Michigan
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Wayne County is Detroit. That sentence carries more economic history than any data point can. The county scores 65.1 — Serious zone, 493rd nationally, 5th among Michigan's 83 counties. Debt & Delinquency registers at 83.6. Auto loan delinquency sits at the 94.3rd percentile. In the county that built the American auto industry, residents are defaulting on car loans at a rate exceeded by fewer than 6% of counties nationwide. Income & Poverty scores 79.9. Poverty rate: 87.7th percentile. Child poverty: 89.1st. Student loan delinquency: 87.2nd. Bankruptcy filing rate: 96.3rd — among the highest in the country. This is a distress profile where nearly every domain registers severe. The one exception is Employment & Wages at 38.5, pulled down by a wage-to-rent ratio at just the 22.7th percentile. Rents are low enough relative to wages that the employment domain reads moderate. Housing is cheap because demand collapsed. That's not relief. That's the scar. Oakland County, directly to the north, scores 28.5 (Healthy). The two counties share a border and almost nothing else. Macomb County: 43.9. Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor): 39.3. Wayne County sits at the center of a metro where prosperity surrounds concentrated distress. The 36.6-point gap between Wayne and Oakland is one of the largest neighbor differentials in the dataset.
The Numbers Behind the Score
The CDI measures five statistically derived factors of household financial distress, PCA-weighted. Wayne County's primary driver is Legal Distress at 96.3 — worse than roughly 96% of U.S. counties.
Scores are percentile-based: 50 = national median, higher = more distressed.
Neighbors and Peers
Neighboring Counties
| County | Score | Zone | vs. Wayne County |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne County, MI | 76.2 | Serious | — |
| Macomb County, MI | 54.1 | Elevated | -22.1 |
| Monroe County, MI | 48.7 | Normal | -27.5 |
| Washtenaw County, MI | 41.9 | Normal | -34.3 |
| Oakland County, MI | 38.1 | Normal | -38.1 |
Population Peers
| County | Score | Zone | vs. Wayne County |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clark County, NV | 76.5 | Serious | +0.3 |
| Duval County, FL | 77.4 | Serious | +1.3 |
| Orange County, FL | 73.9 | Serious | -2.3 |
| Dallas County, TX | 73.7 | Serious | -2.5 |
| Philadelphia County, PA | 73.5 | Serious | -2.7 |
Download Data
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