By and large, these recent years were a continuation of previous trends. Compared with the rest of the country, the places worse off in 2019 than in 2016 were more than four times as likely to have also been worse off in 2016 versus 2012.

Worse-off counties share something else, in addition to being rural and weighted toward agricultural and manufacturing jobs: They lean Republican.

Worse-off counties voted Trump-over-Clinton in 2016 by an average margin of 21 percentage points. The couple of dozen counties that are worse off on all three measures voted for Trump by an average margin of 47 percentage points. The rest of the country, where the vast majority of population and voters are, favored Hillary Clinton by three percentage points.

Of course, most of blue America and most of red America was better off economically in 2019 than in 2016 — and to a similar extent on average. While the most struggling places in America tended to vote for Mr. Trump, so did a disproportionate share of places with the fastest job growth since 2016. Red America includes places with a wider range of economic conditions — booming outer suburbs as well as struggling Great Plains farming communities — than blue America does.

Jed Kolko is the chief economist at Indeed.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @JedKolko.