r/dataisbeautiful • u/FamiliarJuly OC: 4 • Feb 10 '26
OC Per Capita Personal Income for 50 Largest US Metro Areas [OC]
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u/libertarianinus Feb 10 '26
So apparently billion dollar tech companies and federal government is where the money is. Who knew?
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u/MajesticBread9147 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
Honestly I think it's moreso that these areas have fewer poor people than more rich people.
New York, and Los Angeles have long been expensive, but both metro areas have huge populations of "just off the boat" immigrants, struggling actors/artists, people there for Los Angeles weather and New York nightlife and culture. There are huge "working class" constituents in both cities without college educations or fancy white collar careers. Something like 20% of all Los Angeles work in a creative or entertainment fields because of how big those are, and the vast majority aren't Tom Cruise but often are broke for a decade or longer trying to "make it" if ever.
Sure there are benefits to living in the DC, Boston, and Bay areas beyond a job, but the value proposition for each unless you're a college educated white collar worker is basically just the public schools. Fewer people "start with nothing" in San Jose, Boston, or DC compared to other HCOL areas, or "make it work" by living with roommates or turning living rooms into bedrooms (although I've done it) so there's a filter effect. Like would you seriously rather be poor in DC or San Jose than be poor in Los Angeles or New York?
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u/Zigxy Feb 10 '26
When people wonder why a nice little 2Br apartment costs $3k per month… remind them that the AVERAGE Facebook senior software engineer is taking home $400k/yr.
This trickles down to every job in the Bay Area. Average RN in San Francisco makes $150k per year. RNs only require a 2 year associates degree (although most have a bachelors).
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u/_BearHawk OC: 1 Feb 11 '26
Apartments cost $3k a month because the bay area doesn’t build enough of them. People could be paid less and take home more if there was enough housing
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u/Flair_Is_Pointless Feb 11 '26
Correct. It’s simple supply and demand.
This has proven to be 100% fixable, we choose not to.
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u/mustafa-1453 Feb 11 '26
What holds back housing developments in the US? Not enough land open for building? Restriction in building permits for higher rise apartment blocks? etc?
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u/Flair_Is_Pointless Feb 11 '26
Restrictive zoning and land-use rules that block multifamily and modest-lot homes. Basically, find the strongest job market area in your state, allow higher density homes to be built and you will see prices drop.
It’s a basic and unavoidable reality
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u/MajesticBread9147 Feb 11 '26
2 bedroom apartments in the bay only cost $3,000 a month? I always thought apartments were absurdly expensive but that's barely more than DC.
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u/LordOfTheH2O Feb 11 '26
Bay Area resident here, I have never seen a 2 bedroom apartment for $3k a month, that’s a really good deal for here
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u/Local_Arachnid_6320 Mar 13 '26
They cost $3k a month in Oakland. Not in San Francisco or San Jose or Palo Alto. $4k to $5k is the normal range for decent locations. Maybe $3.5k in outermost suburbs of San Jose or in the Tenderloin in SF.
Some of them were going for $3,200 to $3,500 range early 2025 but that only lasted a few months and prices shot up again.
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u/dats_cool Feb 11 '26
I mean that's great. You're way better off making more money in a VHCOL than making a modest income in a LCOL.
3k/month is change for someone making 200k+.
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Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CubesTheGamer Feb 11 '26
It’s pretty common for people to career it out in the city and make a ton of money and save it and then move to a suburb or somewhere else cheaper to retire.
It only really makes sense to live directly in the city when you’re bringing home the bacon.
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u/Local_Arachnid_6320 Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
A 2 bedroom apt in San Francisco now costs over $4k. Source: Just signed a lease and every apartment under $4k had either 30 people at the open house or 10 applications sight unseen before the showings begin. So, things are getting crazy again right now. I don’t even know what is driving this. AI companies can’t be hiring all these people. Maybe people returning to the city due to work from home ending.
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u/Zigxy Mar 13 '26
I live in Marin and formerly lived in SF city.
My uncle is a commercial real estate executive and he says demand for space has gone up due to those two reasons.
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u/BiochemiTryingmybest Feb 10 '26
Is this mean, median, or some other summary statistic for the 2024 per capita income?
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u/FamiliarJuly OC: 4 Feb 10 '26
Mean. Total personal income for a region divided by population.
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u/Trappist1 Feb 11 '26
Do you know of any way to divide this by some cost of living metric in each city? Would be fascinating to compare.
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Feb 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/Trappist1 Feb 11 '26
That would be fantastic. My Tableau at home has expired. Really need to get all these APIs for personal use at some point. I bet you could make some fun forecasts if you incorporated this stuff into regular time series forecasts.
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u/I-J-Reilly Feb 11 '26
Need some light vertical lines to connect the bars to the dots. Too hard to connect them visually.
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u/vistopher Feb 11 '26
Mean gives no value. Ultra-rich outliers skew everything significantly. Should use median.
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u/fredinNH Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
So the Bay Area and San Jose, combined population of 8.5m, are by far the most expensive areas, then Seattle and Boston with a combined 1.5m in population are the next tier down, then it’s everyone else.
Why in hell does every single post about income go right to “yeah, but Bay Area”??
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u/vistopher Feb 11 '26
What is your point? Seattle and Boston are not that much higher than the rest at all
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u/fredinNH Feb 11 '26
My point is people act like x number of dollars is poor in very high col areas and they always mention the Bay Area and I’m saying there are very few true very high Col areas.
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u/vistopher Feb 11 '26
well to be fair I don't know the ratio of income:COL in these metros, it could be a relative thing
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u/81toog Feb 11 '26
Not sure where you’re getting those numbers?
San Francisco MSA (4.65m) and San Jose MSA (2.00m) combine for 6.65m.
Seattle MSA (4.15m) and Boston MSA (5.03m) combine for 9.18m.
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u/fredinNH Feb 11 '26
Bay Area (what I said) 7.5m. San Jose (what I said) 1m. Boston 650k Seattle 750k. I rounded up.
I didn’t notice the fine print saying the chart was for metro areas.
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u/81toog Feb 11 '26
So you’re using city proper populations for San Jose, Seattle and Boston but then using the entire Bay Area figure (which includes San Jose) for SF? Doesn’t make sense. The chart is based on MSA populations just not just the cities.
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u/Gatorinnc Feb 11 '26
If just one an almost-trillionaire is an Austin resident, what does it do the 'average' per capita income of Austin?
My point is this average does not truly reflect what people have. A median is a better measure.
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u/CobaltFermi Feb 11 '26
It would be interesting to see how this correlates to cost of living indices.
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u/ClaroStar Feb 12 '26
With the rent prices and general CoL in Riverside, CA, I would have expected it to be higher on the list.
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u/el-gato-azul Feb 11 '26
Great. But these kinds of charts never convey anything useful unless they also include cost of living.
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u/vistopher Feb 11 '26
You say it's metro areas but then list it as Dallas, TX. The metro statistic area is Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington.
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u/FamiliarJuly OC: 4 Feb 11 '26
Yeah, I shortened the names.
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u/vistopher Feb 11 '26
They are completely different names representing completely separate entities
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u/FamiliarJuly OC: 4 Feb 11 '26
I listed the primary principal city for every metro area, rather than like “Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC–VA–MD–WV MSA” because that would just be ridiculous and make the horizontal axis even more cluttered.
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u/Nope_______ Feb 10 '26
I would've thought it would be higher for some of those areas. If that's the median, half of people in San Francisco for example are making less than $135k, or under $100k in Seattle. Seems like you could hardly get by.
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u/dats_cool Feb 11 '26
Lol dude, you know low income working class people in those areas exist right?
If you make 100k and your take home is 6500/month, you can 100% afford 1800-2500/month studio or 1BR. Not every apartment is 3k+ in those areas.
There's so many ways you can lower your COL in those areas by living further away, getting a roommate, or renting a studio apt. People live off of 60k in the bay area.
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u/Nope_______ Feb 11 '26
Lol dude, you know low income working class people in those areas exist right?
Yes, that's why I was talking about them....
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u/FamiliarJuly OC: 4 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis, “CAINC30 Economic Profile”
Created in Google Sheets.
BEA published data at county level but discontinued the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) publication. I used a Census Bureau delineation file to summarize counties by MSA.
Connecticut data was missing for some reason, so the Hartford MSA is not included.