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Notes: Defense spending is defined as Department of Defense expenditures on salaries and wages for military personnel; retirement and nonretirement benefits (e.g., military pensions and health care services, respectively); obligations for contracts for purchases of goods and services, such as weapons systems and information technology consulting; and grants to states and local governments. The U.S. Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment updated the methodology used to calculate contract spending for the fiscal 2018 “Defense Spending by State” report. To allow for comparison, the report included data for fiscal 2017 spending using the updated methodology. Pew used the updated fiscal 2017 figures to calculate year-over-year comparisons.

Sources: Pew’s calculations using data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Annual State Personal Income and Employment, “Personal Current Transfer Receipts (SA35),” accessed March 2020; USASpending.gov, accessed March 2020; U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Economic Adjustment, “Defense Spending by State, Fiscal Year 2018” (2020); U.S. Census Bureau, “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States” (March 2020); U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Actuary, “Statistical Report on the Military Retirement System, Fiscal Year 2018” (2020)