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Top-Tier Career Upside

Metro-level proxy for high-end career upside using ACS high-income household share/count, median earnings, and household income.

Scale0-100

Higher values rank better for this score.

How It's Calculated

The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.

Scoring Method

How the ranking is built

Top-Tier Career Upside is a metro-level proxy for places that sit inside labor markets with unusually strong high-end income and earnings signals.

  1. 1

    Each place is assigned the Top-Tier Career Upside score of its county's matched CBSA.

  2. 2

    The formula is 52% $200k+ household share, 28% log median earnings, 15% log median household income, and 5% log $200k+ household count.

  3. 3

    Components are CBSA-population-weighted percentile-rank scores, with emphasis on high-end concentration and earnings rather than raw metro size.

Technical details
Score TypeMaster Score

Read from the current master score table for this criterion.

Ranking BasisSingle Score

The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Top-Tier Career Upside.

No source details available for this score.

What This Score Means

Top-Tier Career Upside is a metro-level proxy for places that sit inside labor markets with unusually strong high-end income and earnings signals.

Statistics Feeding This Score

  • $200k+ household share

    ACS CBSA share of households with income of $200,000 or more, smoothed for smaller denominators.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • $200k+ household count

    ACS CBSA count of households with income of $200,000 or more, used as a scale signal for high-end opportunity density.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Median earnings

    ACS CBSA median earnings for residents with earnings.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Median household income

    ACS CBSA median household income.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year

Source Data

Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-YearCensus ACS 5-year estimates for housing, income, population, occupation, education, and race/ethnicity inputs at place, county, or CBSA geography depending on the score.Source: U.S. Census CBSA delineation filesCounty-to-CBSA delineation workbook used to map places into broader metropolitan or micropolitan labor-market areas.

Known Limits

  • These are ACS CBSA-level resident and household proxies, not direct measures of live job postings, company headquarters, venture capital, stock-compensation offers, or exact occupation salaries.
  • Places inherit the score of their matched county's CBSA, so the score captures broad commute-shed gravity rather than neighborhood- or municipality-specific conditions.
  • High-end opportunity is proxied with $200k+ household share/count plus median earnings and income; it is not an exact top-X-percent job-offer model.
  • Counties outside Census CBSAs receive a zero for the metro-market component rather than a rural labor-market estimate.

Top 10 Locations

Ranked by Top-Tier Career Upside.

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