Newark Ranks 99th of 100 US Cities for Veterans, WalletHub Finds

Newark placed 99th out of 100 large American cities for veterans in WalletHub's 2026 study — one position above Detroit, which ranked last. Jersey City, the state's other city in the comparison, finished 73rd, meaning neither New Jersey entry reached even the top half of the table.

The ranking, published ahead of Veterans Day, evaluated cities across 19 separate measures grouped into four domains: employment, economic conditions, quality of life and health. The individual indicators ranged from veteran unemployment and housing affordability to poverty rates and access to VA health care facilities. WalletHub has not, in the material released, disclosed the underlying sample sizes or weighting methodology for each metric, so the precise distance between ranked cities remains unclear.

What does the ranking actually measure?

Rankings of this kind compress very different problems into a single number. A city can score poorly because veterans there struggle to find work, or because housing costs consume too much of a veteran's income, or because the nearest VA clinic requires a long trip. Newark's 99th-place finish does not specify which of the 19 measures dragged the city down, and the study as summarized does not break out its performance on veteran unemployment specifically — a notable omission, since employment is the indicator most job seekers can act on.

What the aggregate figure does establish is that Newark performs near the national basement on the combined picture: jobs, income, housing, health care and quality of life for the veteran population taken together. Jersey City's 73rd place, while roughly a quarter of the way up from the bottom, still trails the majority of the 100 cities surveyed.

What this means for veterans weighing a move

For an individual veteran, a 99th-place ranking translates into concrete market conditions: at least some combination of weaker hiring demand for former service members, tighter housing affordability relative to income, higher poverty among the veteran population and longer distances to VA health services. Anyone negotiating a job offer or a lease in Newark should treat these categories as separate questions to verify locally rather than accepting the composite score as a verdict on any one of them.

The gap between the two New Jersey cities — 26 places — also suggests conditions vary meaningfully within a single state's labor market. A veteran's prospects in Hudson County and Essex County may differ on the very metrics WalletHub scored, which is a reason to compare specific services rather than rely on state-level reputation.

The original commentary accompanying the study called for New Jersey to make veteran services easier to access, strengthen mental health resources and reduce bureaucratic barriers to earned benefits. Those are prescriptions, not findings; the data itself says only that two of the state's largest cities rank poorly on the measured indicators. Whether policy follows the ranking — and whether next year's study shows movement — will be the test.