The Sooner State read like a company — a profit-and-loss statement, a balance sheet, and the land, oil, people and politics behind every number.
Two sets of books. The government — a low-debt, oil-levered public enterprise with a growing net worth. And the economy — a $213-billion machine still pumping crude, but quietly rebuilt on aerospace, wind, and tribal enterprise.
Sources: State of Oklahoma ACFR FY2024 (OMES); U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; Oklahoma Policy Institute; OERB; United for Oklahoma; BLS; Census; HUD. Government figures are for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024 — the most recent audited report. Full source list at the end.
Every row below is a strict 1:1: the same metric, the same year, the same source. Oklahoma against the U.S. average. The only thing that changes is the geography — so the gap is the story.
| Metric | Oklahoma | U.S. | Gap | Verdict | Same source · year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unemployment (U-3) | 3.8% | 4.3% | −0.5 pt | Better | BLS · 2025 |
| Underemployment (U-6) | 7.2% | 8.0% | −0.8 pt | Better | BLS · 2025 |
| Per-capita personal income | $62,661 | $72,425 | −13.5% | Below | BEA · 2024 |
| Uninsured rate | 11.5% | 8.0% | +3.5 pt | Worse | Census · 2024 |
| Life expectancy | 72.8 yrs | 78.4 yrs | −5.6 yrs | Worse | CDC · 2023 |
| Incarceration (all forms, per 100k) | 905 | 664 | +36% | Worse | Prison Policy Initiative · 2024 |
| Pattern | Oklahoma beats the U.S. on jobs — and trails it on income, health, coverage and incarceration. | ||||
Where a clean same-year, same-source U.S. figure could not be confirmed (e.g. median household income, food insecurity), the metric is shown elsewhere as Oklahoma-only rather than forced into an unfair comparison. "Gap" is OK minus U.S. (points) or percent difference. Verdict reflects whether the gap is good or bad for residents.
Government-wide statement of activities, all funds, fiscal year ended June 30, 2024. The State took in $33.3 billion and spent $31.5 billion — booking a $1.89 billion surplus that lifted its net worth.
Health Services alone ($11.1B) is larger than education, social services and government administration would be if you removed any one of them. Source: ACFR FY2024, Statement of Activities.
| Operating grants & contributions (mostly federal) | $14.49B |
| Charges for services | $5.35B |
| Individual income tax | $4.52B |
| Sales tax | $3.78B |
| Gross production (oil & gas) | $1.07B |
| Motor-vehicle tax | $1.02B |
| Corporate income tax | $0.65B |
| Fuel, other taxes & earnings | $2.41B |
| Total revenues | $33.29B |
| Health services | $11.10B |
| Education — general | $5.75B |
| Social services | $3.89B |
| Government administration | $3.53B |
| Transportation | $1.45B |
| Public safety & defense | $1.23B |
| Higher-education payments | $1.00B |
| Resources, justice, business-type & other | $3.50B |
| Total expenses | $31.45B |
Figures rounded from the audited Statement of Activities, ACFR FY2024 (in $ thousands). "Other" includes natural resources, legal & judiciary, regulatory services, interest on debt, museums, and the four business-type activities (unemployment insurance, group insurance, lottery, local-government loans).
Government-wide statement of net position, June 30, 2024. Against $46.3B of assets sit just $12.9B of liabilities — leaving a $34.1B net position. By state standards, this is a fortress balance sheet.
| Assets | $ billions |
|---|---|
| Current assets (cash, receivables, investments) | $22.85 |
| Capital assets (roads, buildings, land) | $15.20 |
| Other long-term assets | $8.24 |
| Total assets | $46.29 |
| Liabilities | |
| Other (current) liabilities | $8.08 |
| Noncurrent liabilities (debt, pensions) | $4.85 |
| Total liabilities | $12.93 |
| Net position | $34.08 |
The net worth splits three ways: $13.4B tied up in capital assets the State can't sell (the roads it drives on), $9.2B legally restricted to specific uses, and $11.4B genuinely unrestricted — real flexibility. Add a $1.4B Constitutional "Rainy Day" reserve and a $18.4B combined governmental fund balance, and the picture is a state that has been saving aggressively on a tide of federal pandemic money.
Share of $34.1B total net position. Source: ACFR FY2024, Statement of Net Position.
The audited P&L counts every federal dollar and fee. The appropriated budget is the slice legislators control — and for FY2026 it is smaller, in real per-capita terms, than it was a quarter-century ago.
Education = 48% of appropriations; Health & Social Services = 19%. Bars scaled to the $5.76B education line. Source: Oklahoma Policy Institute, FY2026 Budget Highlights; HB 2766.
smaller than the FY2000 budget once you adjust for inflation and population growth. Oklahoma has roughly one-fifth less real revenue per person to run shared services than it did 25 years ago — even as the state added people.
Sources: Oklahoma Policy Institute FY2026 Budget Highlights; HB 2764; HB 2766; Oklahoma Tax Commission.
Step outside the capitol and the bigger income statement is the whole economy. State GDP hit $213.5 billion in 2025, up 1.5% — and its engine room has quietly diversified far beyond the derrick.
Bars scaled to the oil & gas footprint. Note: figures mix BEA value-added (government, real estate, professional services) with total-activity / impact estimates (oil & gas, aerospace, tribal), so they overlap and are not additive — they show relative heft, not a clean GDP decomposition. Sources: BEA; OERB (oil & gas, FY24); Oklahoma Dept. of Commerce / advancedmanufacturing.org (aerospace); United for Oklahoma (tribal); USDA (agriculture).
Oklahoma's quiet story is energy convergence: the same windy plains that made it the nation's #6 oil state now make it #3 in wind. Almost all of its electricity-generation growth since 2010 has been wind. Meanwhile Tinker Air Force Base — the country's largest air-logistics depot — seeded an aerospace cluster now worth $44B and 206,000 jobs, the state's fastest-growing industry and its hedge against the next oil bust.
But concentration cuts both ways. Oil & gas is still ~23% of all economic activity and the swing factor in state tax receipts. When crude rolls over, gross-production tax can fall half a billion dollars in a single year — exactly what happened in FY2024. Oklahoma's prosperity is real, but it is levered to a commodity price it does not control.
The signature move of urban economist Joe Minicozzi (Urban3) is to stop measuring land by what it looks like and measure it by the value packed onto each acre. Shade Oklahoma's 77 counties that way and a different state appears: nearly all the value lives in two counties.
All 77 counties with accurate boundaries; major lakes shown approximately. Value = 2024 gross assessed valuation (Oklahoma Tax Commission, Ad Valorem Division) ÷ county land area. Range: $57/acre (Cimarron, far panhandle) to $24,831/acre (Oklahoma County) — a 436× spread. Oklahoma and Tulsa counties alone hold ~38% of the entire state property tax base on ~3% of its land.
| County | Assessed value | Value / acre |
|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma | $10.92B | $24,831 |
| Tulsa | $8.70B | $23,175 |
| Cleveland | $3.33B | $9,508 |
| Canadian | $2.38B | $4,170 |
| Mayes | $1.26B | $2,967 |
| Rogers | $1.30B | $2,848 |
| Payne | $1.15B | $2,579 |
| Wagoner | $0.94B | $2,511 |
| Washington | $0.51B | $1,916 |
| McClain | $0.56B | $1,583 |
| Garfield | $1.00B | $1,518 |
| Comanche | $1.02B | $1,517 |
| Carter | $0.77B | $1,486 |
| Grady | $0.94B | $1,370 |
| Creek | $0.81B | $1,326 |
| Muskogee | $0.67B | $1,298 |
| Logan | $0.61B | $1,280 |
| Delaware | $0.62B | $1,215 |
| Pottawatomie | $0.58B | $1,155 |
| Kay | $0.66B | $1,103 |
| Lincoln | $0.59B | $975 |
| Bryan | $0.56B | $969 |
| Kingfisher | $0.53B | $932 |
| Stephens | $0.52B | $926 |
| Pontotoc | $0.40B | $888 |
| Marshall | $0.22B | $809 |
| Garvin | $0.41B | $800 |
| Ottawa | $0.23B | $756 |
| Okmulgee | $0.29B | $663 |
| Custer | $0.41B | $660 |
| Murray | $0.17B | $656 |
| Pittsburg | $0.53B | $619 |
| Cherokee | $0.30B | $616 |
| Noble | $0.28B | $609 |
| Sequoyah | $0.27B | $606 |
| Seminole | $0.24B | $602 |
| Coal | $0.17B | $537 |
| Beckham | $0.29B | $515 |
| Blaine | $0.27B | $459 |
| Love | $0.14B | $436 |
| Woodward | $0.34B | $433 |
| McIntosh | $0.19B | $431 |
| Johnston | $0.17B | $421 |
| Jackson | $0.21B | $414 |
| Hughes | $0.21B | $408 |
| Adair | $0.14B | $381 |
| Osage | $0.55B | $379 |
| McCurtain | $0.45B | $378 |
| Le Flore | $0.36B | $353 |
| Caddo | $0.28B | $353 |
| Grant | $0.22B | $346 |
| Pawnee | $0.12B | $334 |
| Dewey | $0.20B | $318 |
| Major | $0.19B | $314 |
| Woods | $0.25B | $310 |
| Washita | $0.19B | $300 |
| Texas | $0.34B | $261 |
| Craig | $0.12B | $256 |
| Nowata | $0.09B | $238 |
| Okfuskee | $0.09B | $235 |
| Atoka | $0.14B | $226 |
| Alfalfa | $0.13B | $225 |
| Haskell | $0.08B | $211 |
| Ellis | $0.16B | $203 |
| Choctaw | $0.10B | $197 |
| Latimer | $0.09B | $189 |
| Roger Mills | $0.12B | $171 |
| Kiowa | $0.10B | $160 |
| Beaver | $0.18B | $152 |
| Jefferson | $0.06B | $120 |
| Cotton | $0.05B | $113 |
| Pushmataha | $0.10B | $113 |
| Tillman | $0.06B | $110 |
| Harper | $0.07B | $108 |
| Greer | $0.03B | $83 |
| Harmon | $0.02B | $73 |
| Cimarron | $0.07B | $57 |
The pattern is the point: a single downtown block can out-earn hundreds of acres of farmland or sprawl, and a productive well can out-earn both — but only while it flows. Magnitudes are illustrative of Urban3's nationally-documented value-per-acre findings applied to Oklahoma land types, not parcel-level tax data.
Oklahoma is 68,595 square miles of mostly rural land — yet its value is collapsing into a few points. Population growth since 2020 has concentrated in the urban centers: Oklahoma County (806,199), Tulsa County (680,794) and fast-growing Cleveland and Canadian counties on the OKC fringe. The downtown cores the State barely taxes generate more economic value per acre than the vast working landscapes that define its image.
The Urban3 warning for Oklahoma is fiscal: sprawl is expensive. Every mile of new suburban road, pipe and wire is a liability the whole tax base must maintain, while the high-value downtown blocks that could pay for it are a tiny share of the map. A state cutting its income tax toward zero will lean ever harder on the productivity of those few bright towers.
The audited balance sheet counts cash and concrete. The real Oklahoma balance sheet is its capital stock — what's under the ground, on the land, and in its people. Some of it is appreciating; some is being run down.
| Total economic output (2023) | $23.4B |
| Share of state GDP | ~8% |
| Jobs supported statewide | 139,860 |
| Wages & benefits | $7.8B |
| Health services to Oklahomans | $582M |
| Education funding | $351M |
| Growth, FY2019→FY2023 | +$4.9B |
Since McGirt v. Oklahoma reaffirmed reservation boundaries across much of eastern Oklahoma, the tribal economy has become impossible to treat as a footnote. Casinos, health systems, manufacturing and compacts now move $23.4 billion a year and support nearly 140,000 jobs — many in rural counties where they are the largest employer and the de-facto safety net, spending more than half a billion dollars a year on health care alone. On the State's hidden balance sheet, this is the asset class growing fastest.
The population is growing, urbanizing, and — at the ballot box — almost uniformly red. In 2024 Donald Trump carried all 77 counties by a 34-point margin. The only contested ground is the two big-city cores.
Boundary is accurately projected (panhandle, 100th-meridian west edge, Red River south); the red mosaic is a texture, not literal county lines. Trump carried all 77 counties. Oklahoma County decided by <2 pts; Tulsa County by ~15 (Harris 41.3% — the Democrats' best there since 1964). Markers at true OKC & Tulsa coordinates. Source: AP / state results, 2024.
Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in America, yet 2024 also showed the urban–rural split widening: as rural counties shifted further right, the OKC and Tulsa cores moved the other way. The same two dots that dominate the value-per-acre map are the only places the state's politics are genuinely competitive.
Race/ethnicity shares overlap (Census categories). American Indian share is among the highest of any state.
Three of the top five ring Oklahoma City. The remaining 72 counties share the rest. Median household income statewide: $61,364 — about 18% below the U.S. Source: Census / world population review.
In 2023, 107,679 people moved in and 84,309 moved out — a net gain of +23,370, and roughly 88 new arrivals a day. After decades of "brain drain," Oklahoma is now a net importer of people, especially young ones: millennial in-migration ran 53% above out-migration, and OKC ranked 8th nationally for millennial moves.
Net domestic in-migration by origin state. Oklahoma also ranks 12th for growth in families with children. Sources: IRS/Census migration; OCPA; KC Fed.
By the headline numbers, Oklahomans are working and starting businesses at a brisk clip. The state added 140,000 jobs in five years and now has the highest rate of new business ownership in at least two decades.
The entrepreneurial surge is real: the share of working adults who are new business owners climbed from 12.8% a decade ago to nearly 19% — and Oklahoma County alone logged 14,955 new business applications in 2023, the most of any county in the state. In 2024, 75 company expansions or relocations were announced, carrying a potential $5.19 billion in investment and 5,564 jobs.
| Unemployed residents (U-3) | 76,800 |
| Marginally attached to labor force | 18,600 |
| U-3 unemployment rate | 3.8% |
| U-6 underemployment rate | 7.2% |
| New-business-owner rate | ~19% |
"Marginally attached" want work and looked in the past year but not the last 4 weeks. Source: BLS Southwest, 2025; GEM; U.S. Chamber.
The state runs a surplus; many of its households do not. Behind a low jobless rate sits thin savings, rising rents, real hunger, and a homelessness count moving the wrong way.
The drop in the average Oklahoma household's savings balance from 2019 to 2023 — the second-steepest decline in the nation. Incomes are below average too: per-capita income of $62,661 ranks 40th, and median household income sits ~18% under the U.S.
Food insecurity is the 5th–6th highest rate in the U.S. (2021–23 avg). Child poverty exceeds the U.S. average. Sources: Census; America's Health Rankings; USDA; Feeding America.
| Rental homes short for lowest-income renters | ~85,000 |
| Extremely-low-income renters severely cost-burdened | 70%+ |
| OKC median rent, 2000 → 2018 | $483→$851 |
"Severely cost-burdened" = paying >50% of income on rent. Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition; OK Housing Needs Assessment 2024.
| Oklahoma City point-in-time count, 2024 | 1,838 |
| Change vs 2023 | +402 (~28%) |
| Chronically homeless (OKC) | 474 (+17%) |
| Statewide (HUD AHAR, 2024) | ~5,400 (+17%) |
Point-in-time counts undercount; treat as a floor. Source: OKC PIT 2024; HUD Annual Homelessness Assessment Report.
Behind the economy sits a web of public subsidy — cash to employers, credits to drillers and wind farms, and tax cuts that shrink the base. The flagship, the Quality Jobs Program, pays companies up to 5% of new payroll in cash.
A 2021 analysis found 2011–18 payouts of $524.8M generated ~$4,025M in added state tax revenue — net positive on those terms. Manufacturing (36.8%) and oil & gas (27.1%) took over half the rebates. Source: OK Policy; Incentive Evaluation Commission.
The incentive stack runs deeper than Quality Jobs: a 21st Century version pays knowledge-economy firms up to 10% of payroll for a decade; oil & gas has drawn gross-production tax breaks; wind built out on production tax credits before they were curtailed. An Incentive Evaluation Commission now scores these against their cost.
Set against the revenue side, the picture sharpens: the grocery-tax repeal (~$418M/yr) and the income-tax cut path toward zero are themselves a giant, permanent subsidy — to taxpayers broadly — that shrinks the base funding schools and health. Oklahoma subsidizes both its industries and its tax-cutters, and is spending savings to do it.
| Quality Jobs family of programs (cash to employers) | ~$47–85M |
| Grocery sales-tax repeal (foregone revenue) | ~$418M |
| Income-tax cut, HB2764 (foregone, full-year FY27) | ~$340M |
| Direction of travel | Base shrinking |
Items are different in kind (direct cash vs foregone tax) and not strictly additive; shown together to size the public cost of "keeping the engine running." Sources: OK Policy; Oklahoma Tax Commission; HB2764.
A balance sheet isn't only what you own — it's what you owe your future. On the two line items that compound hardest over a generation, schools and health, Oklahoma sits near the bottom of the nation.
| Overall public-education rank | 50th |
| Per-pupil spending | 49th |
| Per-pupil spend (amount) | $11,311 |
| Avg. teacher pay rank | 41st |
| Avg. teacher pay (amount) | $62,055 |
| Real per-pupil funding since 2008 | −16% |
Each student now receives ~$717 less, in real terms, than in 2008. Sources: WalletHub; NAEP; Oklahoma Policy Institute.
| Overall health & well-being | 47th |
| Health-care system rank | 49th |
| Uninsured rank | 48th |
| Uninsured rate | 11.5% |
| Life expectancy (yrs) | 72.8 |
| Poverty rate | 15.3% |
| Child poverty rate | 20.5% |
Bottom-five in nearly every America's Health Rankings measure. Life expectancy fell from 74.1 yrs in 2020. Sources: America's Health Rankings; Commonwealth Fund; Census; CDC.
Oklahoma locks up its people at a rate matched by almost nowhere on earth. It is a moral question and a fiscal one — every cell is a recurring expense and a person taken out of the workforce and the value-per-acre map.
For years Oklahoma held the title of the world's highest female incarceration rate; reforms have eased it off that peak, but the state still ranks in the U.S. top three. Counting prisons, jails, and detention together, Oklahoma incarcerates 905 of every 100,000 residents — more than any independent democracy on the planet.
This belongs on the balance sheet. Corrections is a billion-dollar-scale recurring cost (public safety & defense ran $1.23B in FY2024), and the human capital removed — disproportionately rural, poor, and from the same overlooked communities the schools and clinics underserve — never shows up as the foregone output it is. It is the negative space in the Urban3 map.
Strong where it counts on paper. Oklahoma runs a genuine surplus, carries little debt, holds $2.3B in reserves and sits on a $34B net position that grew almost 6% in a single year. As a credit, it is conservative and resilient. Few states could survive an oil bust as well.
Quietly diversifying. The caricature is a one-commodity state. The reality is energy convergence — #6 in oil and #3 in wind — plus a $44B aerospace cluster, a $23B tribal economy, $7.8B in exports, and net in-migration of 80,000 since 2020. The economic engine is broader and more modern than its politics suggest.
But structurally levered. Oil & gas is still ~23% of activity and the swing factor in the budget. A single year of soft prices erased half a billion dollars of production tax. The State's revenues rise and fall with a number set in global markets.
And deliberately shrinking its own revenue. Four years of federal money funded the savings; now lawmakers are cutting the income tax toward zero and have already repealed the grocery tax. The cushion is being spent down to subsidize structural revenue loss, just as federal support recedes.
Under-investing in its people. 50th in education, 47th in health, 49th in per-pupil spending — in a state that can afford better. The audited books look healthy precisely because the human-capital account is being underpaid.
Growth that skips the kitchen table. Low joblessness and a top-10 jobs record sit alongside the nation's 2nd-steepest fall in household savings, 1-in-5 child poverty, 5th-worst food insecurity, and a homelessness count climbing. The top of the ledger is rising faster than the bottom.
A justice cost off the books. Incarcerating more people per capita than any democracy is a recurring expense and a permanent withdrawal of human capital — concentrated in the very communities the state already underserves.
The one-line rating: a cash-rich, asset-heavy enterprise with a fortress balance sheet, a diversifying top line, and a board that is cutting prices into a commodity downturn while deferring maintenance on its most important long-term asset — its people.