Methodology

To determine the city with the most veterans in every state, 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.

We used census “place” geographies — a category that includes incorporated legal entities and census-designated statistical entities. We defined cities based on a population threshold — census places needed to have a population of at least 25,000 to be considered. 

Cities 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 city’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 city’s share of veterans was above 15% and greater than two standard deviations above the mean CV for all cities’ veteran shares. We similarly excluded cities that had a sampling error too high for their population, using the same definition.

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

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.