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Map: The states where bartending is most and least common

America’s most bartended state is … Montana, followed by Nevada, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics database.

Here’s a map showing the prevalence of bartending as a job in every state:

Bartender Location quotient

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Of course if you do a raw count, the largest number of bartenders is in California, which has the largest number of people. But this map looks at location quotients, which measures the prevalence of a given occupation relative to the national average. It’s no surprise that Utah, with its large Mormon population, doesn’t have a lot of bartenders, but its 0.52 location quotient isn’t the lowest in the country. That honor belongs to Arkansas, a state that’s unusually bartender-averse even for the generally bartender-hostile South.

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