Which States Have the Most Bed Bugs?

While bed bugs are found in all 50 states, some regions battle more bed bugs than others. We took a look at the number of people looking for bed bug relief from each state and compared it to the populations of those states to find which states have the most bed bugs per capita.

Here’s a map showing the results. Dark green means less bed bugs than expected for a state’s population, whereas dark purple means more bed bugs than expected.

As you can see from the map, the midwest region as a whole seems to struggle the most with bed bugs whereas the north central and northwestern states are much more bed bug free.

In the below table, a ratio of 1 means the citizens of the state are searching for bed bug relief on the internet as often as you’d expect given the population size. Greater than 1 means more people searching for bed bug solutions, less than 1 means less people seemingly affected by bed bugs.

Rank	State	Search %	US Population %	Ratio
1	Washington DC	0.99	0.21	4.71
2	Illinois	5.7	3.86	1.48
3	Oklahoma	1.74	1.21	1.44
4	Tennessee	2.93	2.08	1.41
5	Ohio	4.83	3.56	1.36
6	Georgia	4.3	3.23	1.33
7	Missouri	2.47	1.87	1.32
8	Kentucky	1.7	1.36	1.25
9	West Virginia	0.66	0.55	1.20
10	Indiana	2.42	2.05	1.18
11	New York	6.98	5.93	1.18
12	Michigan	3.54	3.04	1.16
13	North Carolina	3.64	3.19	1.14
14	Pennsylvania	4.21	3.9	1.08
15	Arkansas	0.99	0.92	1.08
16	Nevada	0.97	0.94	1.03
17	Iowa	0.98	0.96	1.02
18	Texas	8.93	8.83	1.01
19	Kansas	0.9	0.89	1.01
20	Nebraska	0.59	0.59	1.00
21	Colorado	1.73	1.75	0.99
22	Virginia	2.47	2.6	0.95
23	California	11.36	12.04	0.94
24	South Carolina	1.46	1.57	0.93
25	Arizona	2.03	2.22	0.91
26	Rhode Island	0.29	0.32	0.91
27	Hawaii	0.37	0.43	0.86
28	New Jersey	2.32	2.71	0.86
29	Massachusetts	1.78	2.12	0.84
30	South Dakota	0.22	0.27	0.81
31	Maryland	1.49	1.84	0.81
32	New Mexico	0.5	0.64	0.78
33	Alabama	1.14	1.49	0.77
34	Connecticut	0.83	1.09	0.76
35	Wisconsin	1.3	1.77	0.73
36	New Hampshire	0.29	0.41	0.71
37	Utah	0.69	0.98	0.70
38	Washington	1.59	2.32	0.69
39	Vermont	0.13	0.19	0.68
40	Delaware	0.2	0.3	0.67
41	Florida	4.31	6.54	0.66
42	Idaho	0.35	0.54	0.65
43	Mississippi	0.58	0.91	0.64
44	Alaska	0.14	0.22	0.64
45	Minnesota	1	1.72	0.58
46	Oregon	0.69	1.28	0.54
47	Maine	0.22	0.41	0.54
48	Louisiana	0.76	1.42	0.54
49	Montana	0.15	0.33	0.45
50	North Dakota	0.08	0.23	0.35
51	Wyoming	0.06	0.18	0.33

Washington DC is by far the most densely populated state by a huge margin (I know it’s not technically a state, but you get the drift) and also seems to be dealing with the most bed bugs per capita by far!

Here’s how the states were measured. We compared the % of visitors coming from a state to visit our informative bed bug articles with the % of Americans living in each state. Comparing these two numbers gave us a ratio by which to compare the states.

For example, Washington DC has just .21% of America’s population but made up nearly 1% of the people looking for bed bug infestation help. This means Washington DC had 4.71 times the amount of people dealing with bed bugs from our visitors than expected!

The least bed bug infested state? Wyoming has .18% of the US population yet only made up .06% of our bed bug afflicted users, giving them a ratio of .33 (or 33% of the expected visitors).

How did your state rank?