Published by Salary by Metro · Updated October 12, 2026
Comparing pay across metros
A higher wage in a more expensive metro can buy less. Price parities put the two wages in the same prices.
A wage comparison starts with the nominal wage: the dollars BLS published for the occupation in each metro. That is the right figure for a paycheck. It is the wrong figure, by itself, for what those dollars buy. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes regional price parities for that second question. The series used here is the all-items parity for 2024, released February 19, 2026. The United States is 100. A parity of 115 means prices in that area are estimated at 15 percent above the national level.
The arithmetic
Divide the nominal wage by the area's price parity and multiply by 100. The result is the wage in national prices. To find the salary in a second metro that buys the same as a salary in the first, multiply the salary by the second metro's parity and divide by the first metro's parity. The comparison tool does both, and it uses the parity BEA published for the metropolitan area. It does not use a state parity in place of a missing metro parity.
| Metro | Median | Price parity | In national prices |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | $74,260 | 115.613 | $64,232 |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | $49,410 | 98.629 | $50,097 |
A wage of $63,351 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX has about the same purchasing power as the $74,260 median in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. That is $74,260 times 98.629 divided by 115.613, rounded to the nearest dollar.
What the index is, and what it is not
An all-items regional price parity is a broad price level. It includes rents and goods and services. It is not a budget for a specific household, and it is not a cost-of-living allowance negotiated in a contract. It is also a different year from the wage. The wages are May 2025. The parities are 2024. Using them together is a comparison method, and the pages say which release each number comes from.
One parity covers the whole metropolitan area. A multi-state metro such as New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has one wage and one price parity for the whole area, not a separate index for each city named in the title. The state wage comparison on a job page is a different column: it uses the primary state BLS assigns to the area, which for that metro is New York.
BEA did not publish a 2024 all-items metropolitan parity for every area in the BLS metro file. Several metropolitan areas in Puerto Rico are in that group. When the parity is missing, the comparison says so and stops. It does not borrow the national index of 100 and pretend the area's prices were measured.