What Does Your Job Pay in Every City?
Pick your occupation and see what it pays in every metro area in the country, from the lowest earners to the highest, and what that pay is really worth once federal and state income taxes, payroll taxes and local prices are taken out. Every city ranked, for 824 occupations.
01Pick a Job
Type part of a job title, such as nurse, electrician or teacher, and pick it from the matches. Choose where in the pay range you sit and your household, and the whole page updates for that job.
02Every City Ranked
Every area where BLS publishes pay for this job, ranked by real pay: take-home pay after taxes, adjusted for local prices so every place is in the same dollars. Click a heading to sort, or search for a city or state.
| Rank | Area | Jobs | Pay | Take-home | Prices | Real pay |
|---|
03Pay Against Prices
Each dot is one area: how much the job pays across the bottom, how expensive the area is up the side. Places toward the lower right pay well and cost little; the upper left is the reverse. Hover over or tap a dot for the details.
Pay at the point in the range you picked. Price level: BEA regional price parity, U.S. = 100.
04Two Places, Side by Side
The whole pay range for the job in two places, before and after taxes and prices.
| Point in the pay range | First | Second |
|---|
05Every State
The median pay for the job in each state, after taxes and prices. Darker states are where the pay goes furthest. Click a state to list its areas in the ranking above.
06Where the Jobs Are
The areas with the most people in this job, or where it makes up the biggest share of all jobs compared with the country as a whole.
Concentration is the location quotient: 2.0 means the job is twice as large a share of local employment as it is nationally.
07How This Works and What It Leaves Out
Pay. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025: employer-reported pay for each occupation in each metropolitan area and in the rural areas BLS groups within each state. Annual pay is BLS's figure where it publishes one; for jobs paid only by the hour, such as actors and some entertainers, annual pay is the hourly rate for 2,080 hours and is marked. Pay includes commissions, tips and production bonuses but not overtime pay, shift differentials or nonproduction bonuses such as holiday bonuses, and it does not cover the self-employed. BLS states annual pay for a full-time, year-round schedule, so it can be well above what part-time or seasonal workers actually earn in a year. Percentiles describe how pay is spread across everyone in the job, not experience levels.
Taxes. Take-home pay runs the pay through the 2026 federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, state income tax and state payroll deductions for the area's state, from the DaveManuel.com Paycheck Calculator, for the household you choose, with one earner. City and county income taxes, such as New York City's or Philadelphia's, are not included in the ranking.
Metro areas that cross state lines. Each area is taxed as if the worker lives and works in its main state, the first one BLS lists: the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ area is taxed as New York, Kansas City, MO-KS as Missouri and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA as Oregon. Living or working across a state line can change the result; the estimate assumes both home and job are in the state shown. The ranking marks these areas with the state assumed.
Prices. Real pay divides take-home pay by the area's regional price parity from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (2024), which compares the cost of goods, rents, utilities and other services with the national average. Rural areas use the price level for the rest of their state outside metro areas. A few metro areas defined after BEA's latest figures use their state's price level and are marked.
Keep in mind: BLS advises against comparing these figures across years; the price levels are area averages; and the figures describe people already in the job, not job openings or offers.
08Frequently Asked Questions
Where do these pay figures come from?
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, which asks about 1.1 million employers what they pay for each job. The May 2025 figures pool three years of survey responses. They show what people in each job are paid by employers in each area, before taxes, and include commissions, tips and production bonuses, but not overtime pay, shift differentials or nonproduction bonuses such as holiday or year-end bonuses. Self-employed people and business owners are not counted.
What does "real pay" mean here?
Take-home pay after federal and state income tax and payroll taxes (city and county income taxes are not included), divided by the area's price level from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, so every area is shown in the same dollars: what the pay would buy at national-average prices. A nurse who takes home $80,000 where prices are 10% above average has real pay of about $72,700; one who takes home $70,000 where prices are 10% below average has about $77,800.
Why do the pay ranges matter?
Because the middle of the range can hide a lot. The 10th percentile is the pay that the lowest-paid tenth of people in the job earn or less; the 90th percentile is where the top tenth begins. They describe the spread of pay, not a ladder of experience, and the annual figures assume full-time, year-round work. Comparing the same point in the range in two cities is fairer than comparing one person's offer with another city's median.
Why are some cities missing for my job?
BLS does not publish a figure when too few employers in an area reported the job or when publishing it could identify an employer. Smaller metro areas and specialized jobs have the most gaps. A few very high figures are published only as "at or above" the top of BLS's range; those are marked in the table.
Can I compare this year's figures with past years?
BLS advises against using these figures to track pay over time, because each year's estimates pool several years of survey responses and the methods change. They are best for comparing jobs and places at one point in time.
Does this include the cost of housing?
Yes. The BEA price levels include rents, the biggest reason prices differ between places, along with goods, utilities and other services. They are averages for each area, so a particular neighborhood can be well above or below. For your own rent and savings, use the Cost of Living Salary Calculator.
09Sources
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 tables
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: OEWS frequently asked questions (what the figures cover and leave out)
- Monthly Labor Review: using wage statistics with regional price parities
- Bureau of Economic Analysis: Regional Price Parities by State and Metro Area (2024)
- DaveManuel.com Paycheck Calculator (federal, state and payroll taxes, with their sources)
Cite This Page
This page is free to cite and link. Its figures come from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (pay and jobs), Bureau of Economic Analysis regional price parities (prices) and the DaveManuel.com Paycheck Calculator (taxes) and are kept current, so please include the date you accessed it.
| Format | Citation | Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Plain | Dave Manuel, “What Does Your Job Pay in Every City? Pay by Occupation and Metro Area, After Taxes and Prices,” DaveManuel.com, https://www.davemanuel.com/pay-by-occupation-and-city.php (accessed November 8, 2026). | Copy |
| APA | Manuel, D. (2026). What Does Your Job Pay in Every City? Pay by Occupation and Metro Area, After Taxes and Prices. DaveManuel.com. Retrieved November 8, 2026, from https://www.davemanuel.com/pay-by-occupation-and-city.php | Copy |
| Chicago | Manuel, Dave. “What Does Your Job Pay in Every City? Pay by Occupation and Metro Area, After Taxes and Prices.” DaveManuel.com. Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.davemanuel.com/pay-by-occupation-and-city.php. | Copy |
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| Link (HTML) | <a href="https://www.davemanuel.com/pay-by-occupation-and-city.php">What Does Your Job Pay in Every City? Pay by Occupation and Metro Area, After Taxes and Prices (DaveManuel.com)</a> | Copy |
Source data: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (pay and jobs), Bureau of Economic Analysis regional price parities (prices) and the DaveManuel.com Paycheck Calculator (taxes). Updates: Yearly. How we build our data pages.