STARTING METRO
Chicago
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN
$83,200
median annual pay · OEWS May 2025
550existing jobs
Employment estimate in this occupation
CAREER MARKETS
Find where your work goes further.
Compare typical pay, purchasing power and existing jobs for the same career across metro areas.
Choose the same career in two metro areas.
50 selected U.S. metro areas. Existing employment, not current openings.
YOUR COMPARISON · Chicago & Portland
The job base can be compared; annual pay is incomplete
Portland: BLS suppressed or did not release the annual median for this occupation. Price-adjusted pay cannot be compared without both annual medians. Portland has the larger estimated job base in this occupation: 690 existing jobs versus 550 in Chicago. Employment is a job-stock estimate, not a count of openings.
Special effects artists and animators · OEWS May 2025 pay and 2024 regional prices. A larger job base doesn’t measure current openings or your chances of being hired. Regional price adjustments are approximate, not take-home pay or a personal budget.
34 of 50 selected metros have published annual pay for this career. Choose from the available metros below.
The numbers behind the comparison
Special effects artists and animators · Nominal pay before taxes · Metro areas, not city limits
Explore the metro profile
COMPARISON METRO
Portland
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
Suppressed or not released by BLS
median annual pay · OEWS May 2025
BLS suppressed or did not release the annual median for this occupation.
690existing jobs
Employment estimate in this occupation
What if local prices change the picture?
A separate purchasing-power lens, using OEWS May 2025 pay and 2024 local prices.
Price-adjusted pay is unavailable when an exact annual median or matching price measure isn’t published.
Approximate purchasing power, not take-home pay or a personal budget. Taxes, benefits, personal rent and moving costs aren’t included.
KEEP YOUR OPTIONS OPEN
Find a market worth a closer look.
34 of 50 metros have a published annual median for this career.
| Metro area | Median pay | Existing jobs | Price-adjusted payApproximate · 2024 prices | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San JoseSan Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | $156,950 | 510 | About $142,100 | |
| San FranciscoSan Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | $136,770 | 1,440 | About $118,300 | |
| SeattleSeattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | $134,120 | 1,030 | About $120,700 | |
| Los AngelesLos Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | $124,590 | 4,650 | About $109,700 | |
| SacramentoSacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | $122,880 | 70 | About $115,200 | |
| San DiegoSan Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | $118,750 | 100 | About $106,100 |
Sorted on one measure. No overall “best city” score. Price-adjusted figures are rounded to the nearest $100; sorting uses the underlying estimates.
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE COMPARING
Real data. Clear limits.
Typical annual pay in Chicago is $83,200, 18.5% below the U.S. median for this career. U.S. median: $102,030 · OEWS May 2025.
Pay & job base
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics · OEWS May 2025. Annual medians and employment estimates for the same occupation and metro. Existing employment, not vacancies. OEWS excludes the self-employed.
Local price context
BEA Regional Price Parities · 2024, all items, U.S. = 100. Exact metro-code matches. These are broad average price levels, not a personal cost-of-living estimate.
What to bring to the decision
Compare actual offers, your housing budget, licensing, benefits and the people you want nearby. Pay and job-base estimates help frame questions; they don’t predict your outcome.
Coverage, missing values and the calculation
The 50 metro areas covered here are a selected set, not every U.S. metro. A career may be missing or have suppressed or top-coded wages. Those values stay unknown and aren’t ranked as zero. A metro’s full name and CBSA definition determine the geographic match.
Price-adjusted pay = nominal median annual pay ÷ (all-items Regional Price Parity ÷ 100). It puts metros on a common price scale using different years of data; it does not adjust for inflation between those years. National comparisons use the occupation’s median from the same OEWS release. Local specialization is not estimated from incompatible sources.