The economy may still be struggling to break out in much of the country, but not in Washington, where local federal spending has doubled over the past decade, boosting federal agency employment and contract spending. Lawyers and lobbyists have rolled in from anywhere and everywhere. The local unemployment rate of 5.5% lies well below the national average. It’s also where median household income levels are the highest in the country.

For the second consecutive year, Loudoun County, Va., a 520-square-mile suburban mass that sits 46 miles from the White House, weighs in as America’s richest county.


In the age of the government industrial complex, life is good in suburban Washington, D.C. The area accounts for six of the ten wealthiest counties in the U.S., according median household income data fromthe Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates from 2011.