CAREER MARKETS
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
Chicago: This occupation isn't included in our data for this metro. This doesn't mean there are no local jobs. Portland: This occupation isn't included in our data for this metro. This doesn't mean there are no local jobs. Price-adjusted pay cannot be compared without both annual medians. An existing-job-base comparison is unavailable because an employment estimate is missing for Chicago and Portland. Employment is a job-stock estimate, not a count of openings.
Crematory operators · 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.
8 of 50 selected metros have published annual pay for this career. Choose from the available metros below.
Crematory operators · Nominal pay before taxes · Metro areas, not city limits
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN
median annual pay · OEWS May 2025
This occupation isn't included in our data for this metro. This doesn't mean there are no local jobs.
Employment estimate in this occupation
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
median annual pay · OEWS May 2025
This occupation isn't included in our data for this metro. This doesn't mean there are no local jobs.
Employment estimate in this occupation
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
8 of 50 metros have a published annual median for this career.
| Metro area | Median pay | Existing jobs | Price-adjusted payApproximate · 2024 prices | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BostonBoston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | $59,510 | 30 | About $55,000 | |
| PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | $50,330 | 40 | About $49,100 | |
| Los AngelesLos Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | $47,000 | Not published | About $41,400 | |
| Riverside-San BernardinoRiverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | $45,020 | 40 | About $42,300 | |
| TampaTampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | $39,240 | 70 | About $38,900 | |
| IndianapolisIndianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN | $38,980 | 80 | About $40,700 |
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
This occupation isn't included in our data for this metro. This doesn't mean there are no local jobs. National comparison unavailable.
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.
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.
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.
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.