Amongst counties, Los Angeles County had the largest liabilities by far: over $54 billion at the end of 2022, Reason Foundation finds.
Other counties with significant liabilities include Miami-Dade County, with $29.2 billion in total liabilities at the end of 2022. Cook County had $19.5 billion in liabilities, Nassau County ($14.2 billion), Harris County ($10.6 billion), and Santa Clara County ($10.2 billion) also had significant liabilities.
Several entities in this analysis are cities that have consolidated their operations and financial reporting with the overlapping county. Effectively, these jurisdictions are merged into a single administrative entity. These consolidated governments include Nashville-Davidson (TN), Jacksonville-Duval (FL), San Francisco, Honolulu, Denver, and Philadelphia. Due to their structure and financial reporting practices, these entities cannot be fairly separated into distinct city and county categories. These entities are included in the larger category of counties within this report because their geographic and jurisdictional boundaries match those of the formerly independent counties.
When looking at public pension debt in counties, Cook County's $10.8 billion in liabilities was the most in the United States at the end of 2022, followed by Los Angeles County's $7 billion in pension debt.
Miami-Dade County, Santa Clara County, San Diego County, Orange County, and Prince George's County each had more than $2 billion in public pension liabilities at the end of 2022.
At the end of 2022, the governments representing the 100 most populous counties across America owed $448.6 billion in total debt, including an aggregate of $151.2 billion in employee-related benefits debt—$71.3 billion as net public pension liabilities and $79.9 as net other post-employment benefit liabilities, such as medical benefits promised to retirees.
The 10 most indebted counties, in terms of total liabilities, were responsible for more than half (56.5%) of the total liabilities held by the 100 most populous counties.
A detailed debt summary for the most populous counties from 2020 to 2022 is here https://debttrends.transparencyproject.reason.org/county.
Overview of Government Financial Transparency Project: State and local debt trends 2020-2020
County debt: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver, Miami-Dade and Cook counties among worst in nation