Public data, financial algorithms, and personal stories.

• BLS OEWS— salary percentiles by metro, role, and experience
• HUD Fair Market Rents— housing baseline by metro
• Zillow Research— current rents and ownership signals
• Census ACS— demographic and population context
• State + local tax tables— current statutory rates incl. NYC, Yonkers, SF
• Curated employer data— for Career Velocity inputs (MVP: hand-built)

Real after-tax purchasing power, day one. We compute: gross salary in your role and city, minus an effective federal tax rate (we use 22% as a single-filer midpoint at the modeled income; adjust in your result), minus state income tax, minus any local income tax, all divided by the metro cost-of-living index.

Not in it: housing equity dynamics, employer-paid benefits delta, commuting cost, healthcare premium variation, and childcare.

A 1–10 score, field-specific. Inputs (currently equal-weighted; calibrated in Phase 2):

• Job density per capita— open postings for your role per 100k residents
• Senior role concentration— share of postings above mid-level
• Salary growth rate— field-level CAGR from BLS
• Employer diversity— Herfindahl-style concentration index for top employers

A 9 in tech means San Francisco. A 9 in finance means New York. A 9 in healthcare admin means Nashville. The scale is field-relative on purpose — comparing absolute scores across fields is meaningless.

Two trajectories, stay vs. move, with these defaults you can override:

• Horizon— 10 years
• Salary growth— field- and city-specific CAGR (BLS-derived)
• Promotion cadence— every 3 years, +12% step
• Velocity bonus— destinations with higher Career Velocity get a small promotion-size multiplier
• COL inflation— 2.5% annually
• Discount— expressed in today's dollars
• Confidence band— ±25% of the headline + a fixed model-uncertainty floor

The 10-Year Outlook is a data-grounded model, not a guarantee. Confidence bands exist so you take the headline as a probabilistic answer, not a number to spend.

• Not financial advice— We don't know your full picture. Talk to someone who does for big decisions.
• Personalized to you— There is no single 'best city.' There is only the best city for the specific person you are right now.
• Not a prediction engine— The 10-year number is a structured forecast — treat the confidence band as part of the answer.

City profiles for the top 25 US metros are reviewed by a human before publishing. We update underlying data sources at minimum quarterly. When a methodology changes, we note the version and date on each page. Mistakes get a public correction.