How to read this study
Six releases, one explicit join.
Direct geography and occupation
RentMarker admits only five-digit BLS metropolitan area codes that exactly equal the current metropolitan CBSA attached to a RentMarker market. The occupation code is the detailed SOC code printed above. Nonmetropolitan BLS areas are preserved in source storage but are never assigned to a micropolitan market, county or city for this study.
Transparent housing ratio
Monthly Zillow Observed Rent Index is multiplied by twelve and divided by the unrounded BLS annual median wage. ZORI describes a smoothed typical market rent across a metro; it is not a lease quote, unit-size guarantee or estimate for housing near one employer. One occupational wage is not household income, and the ratio excludes taxes, dependents, utilities, debt and multiple earners.
Independent rent benchmarks
Realtor's studio-to-two-bedroom listing median, HUD's one- and two-bedroom Fair Market Rents and Census ACS median gross rent stay in separate columns. They describe different populations and reference periods, so none replaces ZORI in the published ratio and no average is presented as a new market rent.
Regional price translation
Where BEA publishes a metropolitan all-items Regional Price Parity, the table divides the nominal median wage by RPP divided by one hundred. The resulting value is labelled RPP-adjusted wage. It is a purchasing-power translation against a national price level—not take-home pay, a personal budget or an input to the rent ratio.
Survey and timing boundary
OEWS covers wage-and-salary jobs and combines six survey panels over three years using modeled estimation. It excludes self-employed workers and can suppress employment or wage measures. BLS, Zillow, Realtor, HUD, ACS and BEA periods remain printed separately because the releases are not synchronized. Missing fields remain unavailable rather than being filled from a broader geography.
Across the direct records on this page, the median RPP-adjusted occupational wage is $66,970. That context is shown separately from the median nominal wage of $61,665 and the median rent-to-wage share of 28.3%; combining them into one score would hide the assumptions that a reader needs to inspect.