A State-by-State Look at Where Americans Get the Least Rest
Credit: Daily Vitality
Picture the last time you stretched a day a little too thin. Maybe a late shift, a restless toddler, or one more episode bled into the hours you meant to spend asleep. You are far from alone, and it turns out the odds of that happening shift depending on which state you call home.
Across the country, more than one in three adults sleeps less than the recommended seven hours, according to America's Health Rankings, which puts the national figure at 35.5 percent using 2022 federal survey data. That is a remarkable number on its own. What makes it fascinating is how unevenly it lands. In some states, closer to one in three adults comes up short on sleep. In others, it is nearly half.
This article counts down the ten states where sleep deprivation is most common, building toward the single most sleep-deprived state of all. Along the way, you will find a clear look at what too little sleep can mean for your health, the patterns that explain why certain regions keep landing at the bottom, a few gentle and evidence-based ideas for protecting the rest you do get, and the full ranking of all 50 states. Think of it less as a scorecard and more as a map — one that might help you see your own sleep in a wider context.
Before ranking anything, it helps to agree on the finish line. For adults, the bar is well established: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend seven or more hours of sleep per night on a regular basis for optimal health.
That guidance is echoed by federal health agencies. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute frames it as a range, noting that most adults generally need seven to eight hours and that lost sleep accumulates into a kind of "sleep debt" over time.
That threshold is exactly why the data here focuses on the seven-hour line. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines short sleep duration as usually getting less than seven hours in a 24-hour period, based on what people report about themselves. The state rankings throughout this piece all rest on that same definition, which keeps the comparisons clean and consistent.
These figures come from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a large, ongoing phone survey of U.S. adults. Because sleep is self-reported rather than measured in a lab, the numbers reflect how much rest people say they get. That is the standard way sleep is tracked at the state level, and it is worth keeping in mind as you read.
Federal datasets tend to agree on the broad strokes. A separate 2024 CDC survey, the National Health Interview Survey, found that 30.5 percent of adults slept less than seven hours in a typical 24-hour period. Whether the figure lands near a third or closer to 35 percent, the headline holds steady: a large share of the country is running short.
If you have ever wondered whether you would feel better waking earlier or simply sleeping longer, our look at waking up early versus sleeping in explores that trade-off in more depth.
We will count down from the tenth-highest rate to the single most sleep-deprived state, and New York opens the list at number ten, where 38.4 percent of adults sleep less than seven hours. For a place so often tied to the phrase "the city that never sleeps," the ranking feels almost on-brand.
New York's spot hints at a set of pressures that will echo all the way up this list: dense urban living, long and crowded commutes, high costs, and a demanding work culture. It is an early sign that sleep deprivation is not confined to one region or one way of life — it can take root wherever the daily grind pushes rest to the bottom of the list.
Ohio sits at ninth, where 38.5 percent of adults report short sleep. The list carries us into the industrial Midwest and toward the edges of Appalachia that reach into the state's southeast.
Ohio is a reminder that the high-short-sleep band is not only a Southern story. It extends into Rust Belt states that share overlapping economic and health pressures, widening the map of where rest runs scarce.
Arkansas lands at eighth, with 38.7 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours — separated from the states around it on the list by only a fraction of a percentage point. It is one of several Southern states clustered tightly together as the countdown climbs.
That consistency is the point. When state after neighboring state lands within a percentage point of one another, it suggests that something regional, rather than purely individual, is shaping how people sleep.
Tennessee holds seventh place, where 38.8 percent of adults report short sleep. The margins separating the states in this stretch of the ranking are slim, often a fraction of a percentage point.
That tightness matters. It means the difference between, say, seventh and tenth place is far less meaningful than the broad reality these states share: roughly two in five adults are not getting enough rest, year after year.
Nevada breaks the regional mold at sixth, with 38.9 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours. Unlike most of the top ten, it sits in the West rather than the South.
Nevada's profile hints at a different driver. The state's economy leans heavily on hospitality, gaming, and round-the-clock service work, and overnight or rotating schedules are a well-documented strain on sleep. It is a useful reminder that the reasons behind a high ranking are not identical from state to state, even when the end result looks the same.
Kentucky lands fifth, where 39.3 percent of adults come up short on sleep. The state bridges the Deep South and the Appalachian corridor, tying the two highest-ranking regions together.
Like its neighbors, Kentucky reports high rates of the chronic conditions that tend to travel alongside poor sleep. The relationship can feel like a loop: insufficient rest is linked to conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, and those same conditions can make restful sleep harder to achieve.
Louisiana takes the fourth spot, with 39.8 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours. Another Southern state, another rate approaching two in five adults.
By this point, the pattern is hard to miss. The states clustered near the top are not scattered randomly across the country. They form a recognizable band through the South and into Appalachia, and that clustering is exactly what researchers have spent years trying to understand.
Alabama ranks third, where 40.5 percent of adults report short sleep. By this point in the countdown, the geographic story is unmistakable: the Deep South and Appalachia dominate the highest reaches of the list.
Alabama also holds a notable distinction at the county level. One CDC analysis found that the single highest local short-sleep rate in the nation belonged to an Alabama county, a detail explored further when we zoom into the map. It is a reminder that statewide averages can hide pockets where the strain is even more concentrated.
West Virginia comes in second, with 41.3 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours. The state sits squarely in the Appalachian region, a part of the map that shows up again and again in sleep research.
West Virginia also carries some of the country's heaviest burdens of chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes — illnesses that share a tangled, two-way relationship with sleep. As you will see in the regional section below, this overlap is not a coincidence. It is one of the clearest threads running through the entire ranking.
And so the countdown arrives at number one. Here is the twist that surprises almost everyone: the state with the highest rate of insufficient sleep is Hawaii, where 45.6 percent of adults report less than seven hours. That is nearly half the adult population, in a place most of us picture as the very definition of unwinding.
The explanation has less to do with island life and more to do with daily math. Local reporting that drew on the same federal findings pointed to Hawaii's high cost of living as a key pressure, with many residents working more than one job and facing long commutes that quietly eat into the hours available for rest. Demographics may play a role too, since Hawaii is home to the nation's largest share of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults, a group with elevated short-sleep rates nationally. No single factor tells the whole story, but together they paint a picture of a beautiful place where rest is genuinely hard to come by.
If you sketched the most sleep-deprived states onto a map, you would see a clear shape: a concentration across the Southeast and along the Appalachian Mountains. This is not a one-year fluke. The CDC has observed the same clustering across multiple surveys stretching back years.
The most striking detail comes from a county-level analysis. Researchers found that short-sleep rates ranged from 23.8 percent in Boulder County, Colorado, to 48.4 percent in Greene County, Alabama, with the highest rates concentrated in the South and Appalachia. In other words, the gap between the best- and worst-resting communities is even wider at the local level than it is between states.
What makes this especially telling is the company that short sleep keeps. The same regions that report the least sleep also tend to show the highest rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and depression. The maps almost overlay one another. Short sleep appears to be both a marker and a contributor — woven into a larger fabric of regional health challenges rather than standing apart from them. That connection is part of why public-health researchers treat sleep as more than a personal habit.
Geography is only one layer. Within every state, certain groups consistently report less rest, and the reasons are largely structural rather than a matter of willpower. CDC data has documented these disparities across several lines.
Income is one of the clearest. Short sleep is more common among adults in lower-income households than among those earning more, a gap that likely reflects realities like multiple jobs, financial stress, and less control over one's schedule. Education tracks a similar path. So does occupation: shift workers, whose schedules pull against the body's natural rhythms, face a well-known disadvantage when it comes to both the quantity and quality of sleep.
There are pronounced differences by race and ethnicity as well. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults and non-Hispanic Black adults report the highest rates of short sleep, while age plays a role too, with working-age adults sleeping less than those 65 and older. None of this suggests that any group is simply trying less. It points instead to the environments, schedules, and pressures that surround sleep — many of which sit outside an individual's direct control. Even something as ordinary as how active your days are can feed into the picture; our guide on spotting a sedentary lifestyle looks at one piece of that puzzle.
It is easy to treat a short night as a minor inconvenience. The research suggests the stakes are higher than that, especially when short sleep becomes a regular pattern rather than an occasional one.
The expert consensus links habitually sleeping less than seven hours, in observational studies, with a higher likelihood of weight gain and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, depression, and even a greater risk of death. These are associations documented across populations, not diagnoses for any one person, but the pattern is consistent enough that major medical groups treat it seriously. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute explains that quality sleep helps protect mental health, physical health, and safety, influencing everything from blood pressure and blood sugar to immune function and mood.
The mental-health connection deserves its own mention. Even mild, ongoing sleep loss is associated with more symptoms of anxiety and low mood, which can create a frustrating cycle: stress disrupts sleep, and poor sleep amplifies stress. If that loop sounds familiar, our deeper look at how sleep deprivation affects mental health unpacks what is happening beneath the surface and why rest is such a powerful lever for mood.
Sleep deprivation does not stay neatly contained to the people experiencing it. Its ripple effects show up on the road, in the workplace, and across the broader economy.
The safety toll is sobering. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving was involved in 693 deaths in 2022, roughly 1.6 percent of all traffic fatalities that year. And because there is no roadside test for sleepiness the way there is for alcohol, experts widely believe drowsy-driving crashes are underreported, which means the real number is likely higher.
Drowsiness impairs reaction time, attention, and judgment in ways that can rival alcohol. If you ever notice yourself drifting, struggling to keep your eyes open, or missing exits behind the wheel, those are signals worth taking seriously rather than pushing through.
The economic picture is just as striking. A widely cited RAND Corporation analysis estimated that insufficient sleep costs the U.S. economy up to $411 billion a year in lost productivity and related losses, equivalent to well over a million working days annually.
Rest, in other words, is not the opposite of productivity — it underwrites it, a point we explore in our roundup of evidence-backed reasons rest is productive.
Maps and rankings can feel a little out of your hands — you cannot exactly relocate to Minnesota for the sleep stats. The encouraging part is that many of the habits linked to better rest are small, free, and entirely within reach, wherever you live.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute points to a handful of habits associated with healthier sleep. Among the ideas it highlights: keeping a consistent schedule by going to bed and waking around the same time each day; making the bedroom quiet, dark, and comfortably cool; stepping away from large meals, caffeine, and alcohol in the hours before bed; moving electronic devices out of the bedroom; and weaving regular physical activity into your day. None of these are rules so much as options to experiment with, and most people find a few resonate more than others.
If overhauling everything at once feels like a lot, you might start with just one lever — like dimming screens in the last hour before bed. Our look at what happens when you reduce screen time suggests the payoff can reach well beyond sleep.
One more gentle note: naps can offer a short-term lift, but they do not fully replace the restorative benefits of regular nighttime sleep. If sleep trouble lingers despite your best efforts, it is reasonable to talk it over with a healthcare provider, and keeping a brief sleep diary beforehand can give you both something concrete to work from. The goal is not perfection — it is simply giving your rest a little more room in a busy life.
A top-ten countdown captures the extremes, but the complete ranking shows just how much daily rest varies from one state line to the next. The table below lists every state and the District of Columbia by the share of adults reporting less than seven hours of sleep, drawn from America's Health Rankings' analysis of 2022 federal survey data. Higher percentages mean more sleep deprivation.
At the well-rested end of the spectrum, Minnesota and Vermont share the top spot, each with just 29.6 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours. Colorado, Nebraska, and Oregon follow close behind. The District of Columbia reports a rate of 31.9 percent, though it is listed separately rather than ranked among the states. The spread from Hawaii to Minnesota and Vermont is roughly 16 percentage points — a meaningful gap that says geography is doing real work here.
Hawaii has the highest rate, with 45.6 percent of adults reporting less than seven hours of sleep, based on America's Health Rankings' analysis of 2022 CDC survey data. That is the highest share of any state in the country.
Minnesota and Vermont tie for the lowest rate of insufficient sleep, each at 29.6 percent of adults. Colorado, Nebraska, and Oregon also rank among the best-rested states.
The CDC defines short sleep duration for adults as usually getting less than seven hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. The state rankings are based on this self-reported threshold.
Leading sleep organizations recommend seven or more hours per night for adults, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute describes the typical range as seven to eight hours. Needs can vary somewhat from person to person.
Short-sleep rates cluster across the Southeast and Appalachia, overlapping with higher rates of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease, as well as differences in income, work schedules, and other structural factors. Researchers see it as a regional pattern rather than a coincidence.
More than one in three. America's Health Rankings puts the national figure at 35.5 percent for 2022, and a separate 2024 CDC survey found 30.5 percent of adults sleeping less than seven hours. The estimates vary slightly by survey but point to the same broad reality.
It is self-reported. The figures come from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a phone survey in which adults describe how much they typically sleep, rather than sleep measured in a laboratory.
No single cause explains it, but contributing factors reported alongside the data include a high cost of living that pushes many residents to work multiple jobs, long commutes, and demographic patterns. These are associated pressures rather than one proven reason.
Research associates habitually sleeping less than seven hours with higher risks of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and depression. These are population-level associations, not individual diagnoses, but they are consistent enough that medical groups take them seriously.
Many people start with a consistent bed and wake time, or with reducing screens and caffeine before bed. These are options drawn from federal sleep-hygiene guidance, and it often helps to experiment with one change at a time rather than all at once.
About the Author
Angela Nightingale is a Senior Editor at Daily Vitality with over two decades of experience in digital publishing and health and wellness content. She specializes in turning complex, often-confusing health topics into clear, calm, and practical guidance that respects the reader's intelligence. Her work focuses on helping people feel informed and confident — never overwhelmed or alarmed — as they make everyday decisions about how they eat, move, rest, and age.
