Best Cities for Engineers to Live and Work

Date updated: October 29, 2024


Naming the best city or location for a mechanical engineer to live is tough. There are just too many variables—cost of living, home prices, schools, and lifestyle—to provide a definitive answer.
 
But objective information such as the cities with the best-paid MEs and the highest number of employed engineers can help define ME-friendly cities. That data, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in combination with information such as housing costs and public education rankings, can help point the way toward some of the top metropolitan areas for MEs to thrive. 

To put the latest BLS figures into perspective, it makes sense to look at a few background numbers. As of May 2023, the average (mean) hourly salary for the 281,290 mechanical engineers employed in the United States was $50.59, with a mean annual wage of $105,220. 


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Top Pay and Other Perks

 
Metropolitan areas that offer hearty paychecks for MEs are certainly a big draw. Each of these areas also comes with pros and cons such as affordable or steep housing prices or high- or low-ranked public education systems. But strictly from a pay perspective, the 10 highest paying metropolitan areas for MEs are:

1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
2. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif.
3. Albuquerque, New Mexico 
4. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, Calif.
5. Baton Rouge, La.
6. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Calif.
7. Midland, Texas
8. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas
9. Tyler, Texas
10. Washington D.C.-Arlington and Alexandria, Virg. 

If you’re looking for an area with the best pay and top tech companies, set your sights on the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area of Northern California. Home to many of the world’s tech giants, median hourly wages are $75.13, or $156,270 annually. ME salaries in the second-ranked San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward area, about 50 miles north of San Jose, are just a hair lower.
 
That’s nice pay, but there’s a huge caveat. The typical, or median, housing sale price is a whopping $1.3 million in the San Jose area and $1.4 million in the San Francisco area. Schools-wise, California ranks 23rd overall in public education, 37th in pre-K-12, and sixth in higher education, according to U.S. News and World Report. California is second in the country for the most MEs employed behind Michigan, according to BLS.

Third-ranking Albuquerque, New Mexico, is home to Sandia National Laboratories, which focuses on developing science and technology to solve national security issues. Intel, SAIC, and Honeywell also have large divisions in the area. MEs earn an average of $64.40 hourly and $133,950 annually. The median home sale price in Albuquerque is $337,000. And while New Mexico is considered the top-paying state in the country for MEs, it ranks last in overall education and last in pre-K-12.

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Seventh-ranking Midland, Texas is home to a high-paying industry for MEs: oil and gas extraction ($77.57 hourly, $161,340 annually.) Meanwhile, the Midland hourly mean wage for all MEs is $60.57 and $125,990 annually, and the median home sale price is $377,000.
 
The Washington, D.C.-Arlington and Alexandria, Virg. areas rank 10th in pay. And while there’s not a high number of ME jobs in Washington, D.C., the district is the second highest paying “state” in the country, according to BLS. In fact, MEs can also find a lot of high-paying ME jobs outside of the D.C./ Virginia main hubs. The Northeast Virginia area has the highest concentration of jobs and pay for all “nonmetropolitan” locations in the country.

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Even further south, in eighth-ranking Lake Charles, La., MEs earn an average of $55.20 an hour or $114,820 a year. Top companies include LyondellBasell Industries, Citadel Completions, Kiewit Corp., Westlake Chemical, Bechtel, Northrop Grumman, and Turner Industries. Median home prices hover around $179,226. The state ranks low in public education, with a 48 overall, 48 higher ed, and 46 pre-K-12. 
 
Home to Idaho National Laboratories, Battelle, and the Naval Nuclear Laboratory, ninth-ranking Idaho Falls pays an hourly ME wage of $54.23, $112,800 annually. The typical home sells for $291,479, while the education system ranks 29 overall, 30 higher ed and 23 pre-K-12. 
 
For the 10th-ranking metro area with the country’s best pay, MEs can head to Salinas, Calif., about two hours south of San Jose, where the hourly wage is $53.91 or $112,140. Top companies in the area include Pacific Scientific Energetic Materials, TEKNOVA, Farmwise Labs and Joby Aviation. The typical house sells for about $620,161.
 

But Wait, There’s More

Metro areas with the highest employment levels of MEs could be viewed as a good or a bad thing, depending on who’s looking. The designation means a lot of jobs but also a lot of potential competition. Here’s a look at the top 10:  

1. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Mich.
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif.
3. Boston-Cambridge, Mass.; Nashua, N.H.
4. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas
5. Philadelphia, Penn.-Camden, N.J.-Wilmington, Delaware
6. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Ill.
7. New York; Newark-Jersey City, N.J.
8. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
9. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif. 
10. Pittsburgh, Penn.

BLS gets even more granular and names the 10 metro areas with the highest concentration of jobs and “location quotient.” That latter stat compares the area concentration of a specific job to the national average. “Metro” areas in Michigan, where manufacturing is the top industry, rule the list:

1. Columbus, Ind. 
2. California-Lexington Park, Maryland
3. Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa
4. Saginaw, Mich.
5. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Mich.
6. Huntsville, Ala. 
7. Ann Arbor, Mich.
8. New Bern, N.C.
9. Fond du Lac, Wis. 
10. Bremerton-Silverdale, Wash.

 Jeff O’Heir is a technology and engineering writer based in Huntington, N.Y.