Free US Salary & Cost-of-Living Dataset (2026)

A free, open dataset of average US salaries by job and metro, joined with cost-of-living and housing data - the same government-sourced data behind the salary, cost-of-living, and paycheck tools on this site. Built for analysts, journalists, students, and developers.

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License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) - free to use, share, and adapt, including commercially, with credit to Kultranz (kultranz.com).

What’s included

Each of the 1,000 rows is one occupation in one metro, with these fields:

FieldDescriptionSource
job_title, city, stateOccupation and metroBLS
avg_salaryAverage annual wageBLS OEWS
salary_10th … salary_90thWage percentiles (10/25/50/75/90)BLS OEWS
national_avgNational average for the occupationBLS OEWS
col_indexCost-of-living index (US = 100)BEA RPP
median_home_value, median_rentMetro housing costsUS Census ACS
city_median_incomeMedian household incomeUS Census ACS
employment, city_populationMetro employment & populationBLS / Census

See the data in action

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. It's released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) - free for any use, including commercial, as long as you credit Kultranz (kultranz.com) as the source.

1,000 rows covering ~20 occupations across ~50 US metro areas. Each row has the average salary, BLS wage percentiles (10th/25th/median/75th/90th), the national average, a BEA cost-of-living index, median home value, median rent, median household income, and metro employment.

Wages are from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). The cost-of-living index is the BEA Regional Price Parity (all items, US = 100). Housing and income are US Census American Community Survey (ACS) estimates. It's the 2026 data vintage.

Annually, as the underlying government sources publish new releases. The current file is the 2026 vintage.