- Business Insider looked at the purchasing power of a six-figure salary in different Texas cities.
- We adjusted $100,000 for Texas’ 25 metro areas using cost of living data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
- Based on 2023 data, the purchasing power of $100,000 would be $102,438 in the Austin metro area.
One of Texas’ big draws for the thousands of Americans who move there each year is its relatively low cost of living.
However, purchasing power isn’t the same across Texas metros. If you had $100,000 in Austin, it wouldn’t have the same value as in Longview, Corpus Christi, and other places in the state.
To compare people’s purchasing power depending on where they are, Business Insider calculated what $100,000 means for each Texas metropolitan statistical area when adjusted by its regional price parity. That gives a sense of how much $100,000 at national average prices would actually buy in those cities based on their local cost of living.
Most of the 25 metros in the state had regional price parities below 100 in 2023, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed. That means their price levels were less than the national average.
“Whether you are considering a job offer in a more expensive city, looking for an affordable place to retire, or are just curious about how price levels compare between different parts of the country, our regional price parities can help,” Vipin Arora, the director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a December post.
Texas has long been an attractive state for movers. Census Bureau data showed Texas had the largest positive net domestic migration — or the biggest number of people moving in from elsewhere in the US minus people leaving Texas for another state — from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, among states.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that many kinds of healthcare workers make over $100,000 on average in Texas. Ship engineers, postsecondary business teachers, and management analysts are a few of the other jobs that make over $100,000 on average in the Lone Star State.
The Dallas metro area had the highest regional price parity among the 25 Texas metros. Given the regional price parity for Dallas was 103.3 in 2023, that would mean the adjusted value of $100,000 at average national prices equals around $96,800 in that city.
Below is what $100,000 is worth in cities across Texas, ranked from lowest adjusted value to highest. We also included the 2023 regional price parity for each metro in Texas.
