50 Largest US Cities By Median Household Income, Under Age 25, 2016

[dimondpark]

50 Largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas by Median Household Income, 2017
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $117,474
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA $101,714
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV $99,669
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH $85,691
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue $82,133
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD $77,394
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI $76,856
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO $76,643
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA $76,207
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA $75,368

Austin-Round Rock, TX $73,800
Raleigh, NC $72,576
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA $71,931
Salt Lake City, UT $71,510
Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT $71,414
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA $69,992
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD $68,572
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI $68,403
Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA $67,902
Richmond, VA $67,633

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX $67,382
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA $65,381
Providence-Warwick, RI-MA $65,226
Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC $64,255
Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN $63,939
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX $63,802
Columbus, OH $63,764
Kansas City, MO-KS $63,404
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA $61,994
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN $61,653

St. Louis, MO-IL $61,571
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ $61,506
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC $61,156
Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN $59,566
Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI $59,448
Jacksonville, FL $58,709
Pittsburgh, PA $58,529
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI $58,411
Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN $57,279
Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV $57,189

San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX $56,774
Oklahoma City, OK $56,260
Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY $55,448
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL $55,089
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL $54,284
Birmingham-Hoover, AL $53,107
Cleveland-Elyria, OH $52,489
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL $52,212
Memphis, TN-MS-AR $50,984
New Orleans-Metairie, LA $50,528

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Agreed. Each year we have a little family get-together in the Bay Area hosted by my cousin and her husband, who reside in San Jose. They live in a solidly "middle middle class" section of the city characterized by modest looking bungalows of approximately 1,500 SF. That these generic homes are selling/asking for $800-900 per SF is outrageous, and certainly not something worth bragging about IMO.

Not even the Greater NYC area is as expensive. For the same price, you can buy a large, stately looking home on a comparatively expansive lot in blue-chip suburbs (Westchester, Fairfield Counties) with great commuter rail access to Manhattan as in the example below:

https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/.../pid_24457398/

It's not really an exact comparison, because the property taxes will be like 5x higher, there's a "mansion tax" (on anything above $1 million) and you have the nation's highest transfer taxes. A $1.5 million home in San Jose is almost certainly cheaper long-term than a $1.1 million home in Westchester County.

But yeah, the underlying premise is true. San Jose has incredibly expensive homes, and they generally look like entry-level lower-middle class postwar homes. Cupertino homes look like the working class burbs of Detroit. San Jose is technically the richest metro on earth but you would never know it.

[Crawford]

Looking closer at these numbers, is there a high sampling error or something? Some of these one-year estimates seem odd.

How can the median Philly household become 4% poorer and the median Miami household become 16% richer, in one calendar year, under the same economy? That doesn't seem to make much sense. Probably 80-90% of jobs have modest step income increases, and median households don't have much investment income, so what would account for such a huge one year discrepancy?

[UrbanRevival]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Looking closer at these numbers, is there a high sampling error or something? Some of these one-year estimates seem odd.

How can the median Philly household become 4% poorer and the median Miami household become 16% richer, in one calendar year, under the same economy? That doesn't seem to make much sense. Probably 80-90% of jobs have modest step income increases, and median households don't have much investment income, so what would account for such a huge one year discrepancy?

Year-to-year changes are prone to a pretty high MOE. That's why it's more accurate to take a longer-term view of income.

Even then, as others have alluded to, I personally don't see household income as a very good indicator for economic prosperity given inherent variations in household sizes. Individual income/earnings is much more telling (and represented through medians, not averages that skew towards a small pool of very high earners).

Here's the 2017 Census estimates for full-time, year-round workers' median earnings (by metro area), which is also a very good way to normalize the data for what one can expect in each region in terms of truly standard salary.

Sorry in advance for the lack of good formatting; didn't have the time to fix, but you get the picture (ranked from highest median earnings by full-time/year-round worker to lowest). What's interesting is that, particularly accounting for cost-of-living, the numbers are much less stratified from city-to-city, as opposed to median household income.

Also, this is the first year that I've seen the Census offer this metric for ALL employees (before, it was only offered by male v. female employees), so it's difficult to compare to years prior without some tedious arithmetic. I did happen to do the math for Philly, though, and its individual earnings numbers definitely rose--so household income definitely doesn't give a complete picture.


Top 100 Metro Areas (Median Earnings for Full-Time/Year-Round Employees) - 2017 Estimate

1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metro Area 75143
2. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Metro Area 70869
3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area 65934
4. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT Metro Area 65226
5. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area 62493
6. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metro Area 61286
7. Boulder, CO Metro Area 61001
8. California-Lexington Park, MD Metro Area 60490
9. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA Metro Area 60434
10. Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT Metro Area 57972
11. Norwich-New London, CT Metro Area 57623
12. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Metro Area 57281
13. Trenton, NJ Metro Area 57273
14. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area 56571
15. Manchester-Nashua, NH Metro Area 56309
16. New Haven-Milford, CT Metro Area 56066
17. Napa, CA Metro Area 55681
18. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area 55644
19. Worcester, MA-CT Metro Area 55433
20. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro Area 55419
21. Ann Arbor, MI Metro Area 55299
22. Vallejo-Fairfield, CA Metro Area 54701
23. Midland, TX Metro Area 54480
24. Midland, MI Metro Area 54283
25. Ames, IA Metro Area 54160
26. Bloomington, IL Metro Area 53776
27. Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY Metro Area 53683
28. Santa Rosa, CA Metro Area 53385
29. Ocean City, NJ Metro Area 53151
30. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, CA Metro Area 52936
31. Barnstable Town, MA Metro Area 52259
32. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metro Area 52258
33. Olympia-Tumwater, WA Metro Area 52208
34. Madison, WI Metro Area 52138
35. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA Metro Area 52083
36. Rochester, MN Metro Area 52072
37. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro Area 52034
38. Providence-Warwick, RI-MA Metro Area 52012
39. Raleigh, NC Metro Area 51896
40. Anchorage, AK Metro Area 51886
41. Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, CA Metro Area 51805
42. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metro Area 51739
43. Fairbanks, AK Metro Area 51392
44. Springfield, IL Metro Area 51284
45. Fort Collins, CO Metro Area 51267
46. Austin-Round Rock, TX Metro Area 51261
47. Springfield, MA Metro Area 51197
48. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metro Area 51096
49. Bremerton-Silverdale, WA Metro Area 51086
50. Portland-South Portland, ME Metro Area 50861
51. San Diego-Carlsbad, CA Metro Area 50859
52. Iowa City, IA Metro Area 50743
53. Corvallis, OR Metro Area 50639
54. Racine, WI Metro Area 50432
55. Walla Walla, WA Metro Area 50371
56. Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA Metro Area 50323
57. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC Metro Area 50296
58. Pittsburgh, PA Metro Area 50272
59. Bellingham, WA Metro Area 50265
60. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI Metro Area 50249
61. Monroe, MI Metro Area 50236
62. Appleton, WI Metro Area 50088
63. Kennewick-Richland, WA Metro Area 50022
64. Burlington-South Burlington, VT Metro Area 49854
65. Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA Metro Area 49830
66. Kingston, NY Metro Area 49739
67. Charlottesville, VA Metro Area 49736
68. Columbus, OH Metro Area 49676
69. St. Louis, MO-IL Metro Area 49617
70. State College, PA Metro Area 49556
71. Richmond, VA Metro Area 49311
72. Bismarck, ND Metro Area 49302
73. Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA Metro Area 49269
74. Huntsville, AL Metro Area 49202
75. Casper, WY Metro Area 48875
76. Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Metro Area 48837
77. Peoria, IL Metro Area 48807
78. Urban Honolulu, HI Metro Area 48730
79. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area 48657
80. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX Metro Area 48409
81. Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA Metro Area 48348
82. Ogden-Clearfield, UT Metro Area 48171
83. Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ Metro Area 48160
84. Ithaca, NY Metro Area 47979
85. Syracuse, NY Metro Area 47974
86. Longview, WA Metro Area 47895
87. Baton Rouge, LA Metro Area 47842
88. Gettysburg, PA Metro Area 47732
89. Kansas City, MO-KS Metro Area 47711
90. Winchester, VA-WV Metro Area 47617
91. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA Metro Area 47517
92. Greeley, CO Metro Area 47416
93. Rochester, NY Metro Area 47382
94. Pittsfield, MA Metro Area 47367
95. Cleveland-Elyria, OH Metro Area 47345
96. York-Hanover, PA Metro Area 47271
97. Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN Metro Area 47184
98. Provo-Orem, UT Metro Area 47096
99. Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC Metro Area 47086
100. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA Metro Area 47047

[dimondpark]

77 counties(out of 3,000+) now have a median family income of $100,000+

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It's not really an exact comparison, because the property taxes will be like 5x higher, there's a "mansion tax" (on anything above $1 million) and you have the nation's highest transfer taxes. A $1.5 million home in San Jose is almost certainly cheaper long-term than a $1.1 million home in Westchester County.

But yeah, the underlying premise is true. San Jose has incredibly expensive homes, and they generally look like entry-level lower-middle class postwar homes. Cupertino homes look like the working class burbs of Detroit. San Jose is technically the richest metro on earth but you would never know it.

Fair enough. The lower state income and local sales tax rates aren’t nearly enough to offset the discrepancy in paid property taxes (holy cow, are they exorbitant) for Westchester County homeowners. But on the other hand, you’re getting much more real estate (more than double the square footage, lot size) in bucolic, blue-chip commuter rail suburbs. By that same token, you can get roughly the same amount (slightly more actually) of property for a little less than half the price.

This Scarsdale home, which I would consider to be “middle middle class” by Scarsdale standards, represents a good apples-to-apples comp. Per the listing, one would pay $19-20K in property taxes—roughly double that of their San Jose counterparts.

https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/.../pid_24198815/

All things being equal in terms of household size, household income, mortgage plan payments, and all basic expenditures (food, utilities, gas, car insurance, etc.), it’s cheaper to live in Westchester County. And if you live in Scarsdale, it’s just a 30-minute ride to Grand Central from where you can take the Subway or walk to any place in Manhattan. That sounds much more appealing than San Jose, which might as well be the SFV meets Irvine.