Glossary
Plain-English definitions for the salary, cost-of-living, and affordability terms AffordMap uses. Every term here is grounded in an authoritative federal data source, and most include a worked example with current numbers.
BLS OES (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics)
The federal survey behind every salary number on AffordMap. Run twice yearly, covers ~6.6 million establishments across roughly 800 occupations.
Regional Price Parity (RPP)
BEA index that compares the price level of goods and services across U.S. metros and states, using 100 as the national average.
Fair Market Rent (FMR)
HUD estimate of typical gross rent (rent plus utilities) by metro and bedroom count, published each federal fiscal year.
Salary Percentile
Where a specific wage sits in the distribution for an occupation. The 50th percentile is the median; the 90th means 90% of workers earn less.
Rent Burden
Share of household income spent on rent. HUD calls anything above 30% rent-burdened and above 50% severely rent-burdened.
Purchasing Power
How much the same paycheck buys in different cities once you adjust for local prices and rent.
Cost of Living Index
A composite figure comparing the total expense of typical household consumption across cities, anchored to a national average of 100.
Frequently asked questions
- Where do AffordMap salary numbers come from?
- Every salary figure on AffordMap traces back to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (BLS OES) program. We do not modify the published wage values.
- What is the difference between median and mean salary?
- Median is the middle salary in the distribution: half of workers earn more, half earn less. Mean is the arithmetic average. Median is usually the more honest representation of a typical worker, especially in fields with extreme outliers.
- How is cost of living calculated?
- We combine BEA Regional Price Parities for everyday goods and services with HUD Fair Market Rents for housing. The result is a side-by-side view of how far the same salary stretches across cities.
- Why do BLS numbers sometimes differ from Glassdoor or Indeed?
- BLS data comes from employer payroll records, weighted to be statistically representative. Glassdoor and Indeed rely on voluntary user submissions, which skew toward higher-paid roles and tech-heavy industries. BLS is more conservative but less biased.