Where America Sleeps Least: Short Sleep in 3,137 Counties
Updated: 1 day ago
Ask a room of people how many hours they sleep and the answers cluster around seven. Ask the same question across every county in the United States and the answers spread out in a way that says a lot about where sleep comes from.
The data
The CDC's PLACES project publishes model-based estimates for every US county, built on the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. One measure is short sleep: the share of adults who report sleeping fewer than seven hours a night on average, the threshold below which the CDC considers adults short of sleep.
We downloaded the 2025 release from the CDC open data portal, which uses 2023 survey data, and kept the age-adjusted county estimates for short sleep, obesity and leisure-time physical inactivity. That gave 3,137 counties with a sleep estimate and 2,950 with all three measures. We ranked them, weighted the county figures by population to get state figures, and checked how short sleep moves with the other two.
The range
Across counties, an average of 37.3% of adults sleep short. The best county in the country is Boulder, Colorado, at 24.7%, followed by Deschutes, Oregon (25.6%) and Washington County, Minnesota (25.7%). At the other end, Greene County, Alabama has the highest estimate at 51.0%, with Bullock County, Alabama and Phillips County, Arkansas both at 50.5%.
So the gap between the best- and worst-sleeping counties is 26 percentage points. In Boulder one adult in four is short of sleep; in Greene County it is one in two.
Among large counties with at least half a million people, the best sleepers are Hennepin, Minnesota (Minneapolis, 28.2%), Multnomah, Oregon (Portland, 28.6%) and San Mateo, California (28.7%). The worst large county by a wide margin is Honolulu at 49.5%, then Polk County, Florida and Prince George's County, Maryland, both at 43.8%.
By state
Weighting each county by its population, the five best-sleeping states are Vermont and Minnesota (both 30.0% short sleep), South Dakota (30.7%), Colorado (31.2%) and Oregon (31.6%). The five worst are Nevada (40.5%), Kentucky (40.6%), Louisiana (40.9%), West Virginia (42.0%) and Hawaii (47.0%).
Hawaii's number stands out, and it is not a fluke of one county: the state has long led the country on this measure in CDC reports. Long commutes, shift work in tourism and the military, and early sunrises all get mentioned as reasons. Whatever the cause, nearly half of Hawaii's adults say they sleep under seven hours.
What travels with short sleep
Short sleep is not randomly scattered. Across the 2,950 counties with all three measures:
The correlation between a county's short-sleep rate and its physical-inactivity rate is 0.70. For every 10 points more adults sleeping short, roughly 9 points more adults report no leisure-time physical activity.
The correlation with obesity is 0.54, with a slope of about 6 points of obesity per 10 points of short sleep.
Sorted into fifths by short sleep, the ladder is unbroken:
Best-sleeping fifth (average 31.4% short sleep): 34.5% obese, 22.3% inactive.
Second fifth (34.8%): 36.2% obese, 24.4% inactive.
Middle fifth (37.3%): 37.4% obese, 26.5% inactive.
Fourth fifth (39.4%): 38.7% obese, 29.3% inactive.
Worst-sleeping fifth (average 42.6%): 41.5% obese, 32.7% inactive.
Every step up in short sleep comes with a step up in both. This is a county comparison, not a study of individuals, and the three measures share causes, including income, shift work and health. It does not prove that moving or exercising fixes sleep. It does show that sleep, movement and weight rise and fall together across the whole country, which is a good reason to look at them together in your own life too.
Your own county of one
A county estimate tells you the odds; your own mornings tell you the facts. The most useful version of this data is personal: how many of your nights in the last two weeks were under seven hours, and what the short ones had in common. Most people guess wrong on both until they write it down.
Try it by text
Text Hi to (831) 999-2553 to start Sleep Textapp. Each morning it asks how you slept, you reply with a number from 1 to 10 and roughly how many hours, and after a couple of weeks you can ask for your patterns: your average hours, your weekday and weekend split, and what your rough nights mention. No app and no wearable, on any phone that can text.
Your first 20 messages are free. After that, one $9.99 a month subscription covers every Textapp. Text STOP at any time to end it.
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