Methodology

Every salary figure published on CityWage is the output of the same formula applied to the same set of government data sources. This page documents each step, so you can check our work and judge whether the number fits your situation.

The formula

We use the 50/30/20 budget rule. Needs are 50% of take-home income, wants 30%, savings 20%. Because the needs figure is what we can compute from objective data, the rest follow from it:

• Needs monthly = housing + food + transport + healthcare + utilities + other necessities
• Wants monthly = needs × 0.6  (30% of total = 60% of the 50% needs figure)
• Savings monthly = needs × 0.4  (20% of total = 40% of the 50% needs figure)
• Required monthly = needs + wants + savings
• Required annual = required monthly × 12

The annual figure is the headline salary on every city page.

Data sources

Each needs category maps to a specific public dataset. We use regional breakdowns where BLS publishes them — Northeast, South, Midwest, West — so a city in Alabama isn't priced against a national utilities average that's dragged up by the Northeast.

• Housing — HUD Fair Market Rents, 2-bedroom benchmark for the metro FMR area.
• Food — BLS Consumer Price Index, food-at-home, regional.
• Transport — BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, regional transport figures (fuel, insurance, maintenance, depreciation).
• Healthcare — BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey medical-care figures, regional.
• Utilities — BLS CPI for electricity, piped gas, water and sewage, regional.
• Other necessities — BLS CES for apparel, personal care, and education, regional.

Two further figures appear on each page for context, but don't feed the formula:

• Median local salary — BLS Occupational Employment Statistics, metro-area median wage. Used to compute the salary gap.
• National average salary needed — the same formula applied to national-level data, so you can compare like-for-like.

Why 2-bedroom rents

A studio understates what most people actually need, and a 1-bedroom understates for anyone with a partner or child. HUD's 2-bedroom FMR is set at roughly the 40th percentile of metro-area rents — a conservative, reproducible benchmark that doesn't assume roommates and doesn't cherry-pick the cheapest neighborhood.

What "comfortable" means here

Comfortable in CityWage terms is financially stable, not luxurious. The 20% savings rate is enough to build an emergency fund, contribute to retirement, and absorb a job loss without immediately going into debt. The 30% wants category covers discretionary spending — dining out, travel, hobbies — but doesn't assume a lifestyle that requires a second income or trust fund to sustain.

Data freshness and versioning

The pipeline is designed to refresh BLS and HUD data weekly and recompute every city's salary figure monthly, with each recomputation inserted as a new versioned row — we never overwrite earlier figures, so historical data stays queryable. Automation workflows are being finalized; the figures you see today reflect the most recent manual pipeline run. Each city page shows the date its headline figure was last computed.

Known limitations

• Regional cost data lags real-time market shifts, especially in housing — HUD Fair Market Rents are set annually and BLS CPI reflects the previous quarter, so a fast-moving rental market can out-run the published figures.
• BLS OES metro definitions don't always match city boundaries — the median local salary reflects the metro area, not the city proper.
• Figures assume a single-earner household, not two earners splitting costs.
• The required-income figure is a total annual budget (needs + wants + savings). We don't gross it up for income tax — effective tax burden varies by state, employer, and filing status, and we don't model that. Treat it as the after-tax dollars you need to spend each year; your actual gross salary needs to be higher.
• Healthcare is included as a BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey regional average. Real out-of-pocket cost varies wildly with employer-provided coverage, marketplace plan choice, and whether you use your insurance in a given year.

Questions about a specific city's numbers? The about page has more on who we are and why this exists.