Score
Wage Opportunity
Higher ACS median earnings and median household income score higher.
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.
How the ranking is built
Wage Opportunity rewards places with higher ACS median earnings and median household income.
- 1
Median earnings and median household income are log-transformed before ranking so extremely high values do not dominate the scale.
- 2
The final score is 70% median earnings rank and 30% median household income rank.
Technical details
Read from the current master score table for this criterion.
The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Wage Opportunity.
What This Score Means
Wage Opportunity rewards places with higher ACS median earnings and median household income.
Statistics Feeding This Score
- Median earningsSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS median earnings in the past 12 months for residents with earnings.
- Median household incomeSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS median household income for the place.
Source Data
Known Limits
- These are ACS place-level resident proxies, not live job postings, employer locations, occupation-specific salary offers, or metro commute-shed demand.
- ACS values are multi-year estimates and can lag current labor-market changes.
- Small labor-force and industry denominators are shrunk toward all-place means.
- Wage Opportunity is not cost-of-living adjusted; combine it with affordability scores for buying-power preferences.
Top 10 Locations
Ranked by Wage Opportunity.