The census area's per capita income makes it the fourth-poorest county-equivalent in the United States.

[citation needed] In 2014, it had the highest percentage of unemployed people of any county or census area in the United States, at 23.7 percent.

[5] The census area was originally named for Wade Hampton III, a South Carolina politician whose son-in-law, John Randolph Tucker, a territorial judge in Nome, posthumously named a mining district in western Alaska for him in 1913.

The median age was 20 years, making the Census Area the youngest county in the United States.

The census area's per capita income makes it one of the poorest places in the United States.