Methodology

To determine the metro areas with the most veterans, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed five-year estimates of the share of the civilian population 18 years and over who are veterans from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey.

Metro areas were ranked based on the share of the population 18 and over who are veterans. To break ties, we used the number of veterans.

We used the 384 metropolitan statistical areas as delineated by the United States Office of Management and Budget and used by the Census Bureau as our definition of metros.

Metro areas were excluded if the share of veterans was not available in the 2020 ACS, if the civilian population 18 and over was less than 1,000, or if the sampling error associated with a metro area’s data was deemed too high.

The sampling error was defined as too high if the coefficient of variation — a statistical assessment of how reliable an estimate is — for a metro area’s share of veterans was above 15% and greater than two standard deviations above the mean CV for all metro areas’ veteran shares. We similarly excluded metro areas that had a sampling error too high for their population, using the same definition.

Additional information on the share of veterans who served after 9/11, in the Vietnam Era, and during the Korean War are also five-year estimates from the 2020 ACS. Because the Census Bureau didn’t release one-year estimates for 2020 due to data collection issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, all ACS data are five-year estimates.