Highest Paying Jobs in the USA by Location

Most highest-paying-jobs lists are national. Almost nobody has a national career. The interesting variation in US pay is geographic, and it is large enough to change which job you should want.

The comparison that actually matters

The BLS wage statistics publish estimates for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas as well as nationally. That metro view is the one to use, and it answers a different question from the national table.

The national figure tells you what an occupation pays in general. The metro figure tells you what it pays where you could actually take a job. For many occupations the gap between the best and worst paying metro areas is wide enough that occupation ranking and location ranking swap places: a mid-tier occupation in a strong local market can beat a top-tier occupation in a weak one.

We do not reprint figures, on purpose. They are revised, and the lookup takes a minute.

Four reasons the same job pays differently

Local demand and supply. An occupation concentrated in a few metro areas pays a premium in them and less elsewhere, because the employers who need it are clustered.

Industry mix. The same occupation sits in different industries depending on the city. An accountant in a finance centre and an accountant in a manufacturing town are in different industries, and industry is one of the strongest determinants of pay.

Cost of living, partially. Employers do respond to local costs, though imperfectly and with a lag. Pay does not scale cleanly with housing costs, which is why some expensive cities are worse deals than they look and some cheap ones are better.

Unionisation, licensing and public sector share. All three compress or lift local pay in specific occupations, particularly in trades, healthcare and education.

Do not compare gross salaries

The single most common mistake in relocating for money.

Four adjustments turn a headline number into a comparable one.

1. Housing. Usually the dominant difference, and the one to price first using actual listings for the kind of place you would live in, not an index.
2. State and local income tax. Some states levy none, some cities levy their own on top of state tax. This can move take-home pay by thousands with no change in the offer.
3. Commuting and transport. Whether you can live without a car is a real annual number, and it varies enormously between US metro areas.
4. Health insurance and benefits. Employer contributions differ, and comparing salary while ignoring the premium and deductible compares the wrong thing.

Do the arithmetic on what remains after those four. It regularly reverses the ranking of two offers.

Then price the market, not just the job

The subtler point, and the one that matters more over a decade.

A thick local market for your occupation means many potential employers within commuting distance. That is worth money in ways a single salary comparison misses: you can change jobs without moving house, you have leverage in negotiations because a credible alternative exists, and a layoff is an inconvenience rather than a relocation.

A thin market means the opposite. A higher salary in a town with one major employer in your field carries a risk that is real and hard to price. Check how many employers in your occupation are actually within reach before treating the higher number as the better outcome. The O*NET occupation pages include local trend information, which is a reasonable starting point.

Remote work does not remove geography

It changed the question rather than answering it.

Many employers set remote pay by the employee’s location, or by tiered bands grouping locations together. So the same role can pay differently to two people doing identical work, and moving somewhere cheaper can trigger a reduction.

Three things to establish before accepting a remote role: whether pay is location-adjusted, which band you fall into, and what happens if you move. Get it in writing, because this is a common source of unpleasant surprises a year in.

The upside is real too. A person in a low-cost area holding a role banded for a high-cost one is in the strongest position in the whole market, and those roles do exist.

A five-minute location check

For any occupation and any city you are considering.

1. Look up the occupation nationally in the wage statistics and note the percentiles.
2. Switch to the target metro area and note how the percentiles move.
3. Do the same for your current metro area, so you have a baseline.
4. Price housing from real listings and check state and local income tax.
5. Count how many employers in that occupation are actually in the area.

If steps two and four favour the move and step five does not, be careful. That is the profile of a well-paid job that is difficult to leave.

Applying across state lines

Two practical notes, since a location search is also an application problem.

Put the target city on the CV if you are genuinely willing to move, because screeners filter by location and an out-of-area address is a common early cut. And check the posting’s own vocabulary against your document in the ATS checker, since regional employers often use different terms for the same work.

Related

For how to read the underlying data, see highest paying jobs. For which industries pay most for the same occupation, see best paying careers, and for what a single average conceals, the average salary guide. For a specific local market example, see software engineer jobs in Los Angeles.

Use metro data, adjust for housing and tax, count the employers, get remote banding in writing. You can tailor your resume to the market.