Physical inactivity in adults
Percentage of adults aged 18 and over who did no physical activity or exercise outside their regular job in the past month, such as running, golf, gardening or walking for exercise. Crude prevalence, not age-adjusted.
CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a telephone survey of adults, crude prevalence. States and DC only: BRFSS publishes the median of the states rather than a national prevalence, so no national value is served. A state that did not meet BRFSS data standards in a year has no value, and CDC withholds estimates from fewer than 50 respondents or with a relative standard error above 0.3. The dataset also publishes 95% confidence intervals. The series starts in 2011, when BRFSS changed its weighting and added cell phones. BRFSS variable _TOTINDA, adults who answered no to any physical activity in the past month.
Key facts
- West Virginia had the highest physical inactivity in adults of 48 states in 2025, at 29.3%, and District of Columbia the lowest, at 13%. Source: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Published for 51 places, with figures from 2011 to 2025.
Rankings
US states by physical inactivity in adults, 2025
Places with data
Regions and states
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Ohio
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- Michigan
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- District of Columbia
- Delaware
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest physical inactivity in adults? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"adult_physical_inactivity_rate","level":"region","within":"United States"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=adult_physical_inactivity_rate&level=region&within=United%20States