Salary Comparison: Cities Across the U.S.

When conducting a salary search for any job title, it's important to consider regional salary differences. Viewing the median Salary Comparison by City Chart gives us an idea of how salaries vary across the United States. While this chart provides a general idea of how much people are earning, we have to narrow our research in order to find more accurate salary data for specific jobs. Looking at the average nurse salary in the United States, for example, probably won't be as helpful as getting a specific nursing salary comparison by city. In the above salary comparison, cities that stand out include New York and Los Angeles. But how far would a nursing salary go in these areas, considering the relatively high cost of living in all three cities? To find out, we can turn to the PayScale Cost of Living Calculator, which provides both cost of living and salary comparisons by city. With salary data for numerous cities within the United States, the Cost of Living Calculator is the perfect tool for researching salaries by location.

Cost of Living and Salary Comparisons by City

To use the Cost of Living Calculator, simply choose a city from the drop-down menu, enter a job title and hit calculate. You'll find the median salary range for your chosen job title as well as the city's cost of living. The calculator compares the cost of living in a given city to the national average, breaking down the overall cost of living into expense categories such as housing, transportation and health care. To get a cost of living and salary comparison by city, select another city in the "moving from" menu and calculate. You can also enter your current salary to find out how much you would need to earn in another city in order to maintain your current standard of living.

Using nursing as an example, we can get a Cost of Living and Nursing Salary Comparison by City for New York and Los Angeles. The median salary range for a registered nurse in Los Angeles is about $60,000 to around $78,000. A Salary Comparison by City reveals that this is slightly higher than New York's median nurse salary range. However, we can also see that the cost of living is higher in New York. Just the cost of housing in New York is higher by 38 percent. A significant difference in housing costs is definitely something to consider when looking at a relocation salary calculator. In this salary comparison, the better choice is clear - Los Angeles has both a lower cost of living and higher nursing salaries. It's uncommon for a city with a lower cost of living to offer higher salaries, but clearly there are exceptions. For another example, view a Salary Comparison by City for Houston and you'll see that the median petroleum engineer salary there ranges from around $79,000 to about $130,000. That is a high salary range given that the cost of housing in Houston is 24 percent below the national average. These examples illustrate why conducting salary comparisons by city can be so important.