Gera US Real Pay Index — Methodology

The data

• Nominal wages. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 state estimates. State-level annual median (and 10th/25th/75th/90th percentile and mean) wages by occupation. Public domain (U.S. federal government work). Source.
• Cost of living. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities (All Items), by state, 2024 (US = 100). The BEA Regional Price Parity (All Items) expresses each state's price level as a percentage of the US average (US = 100). Source.
• State income tax. Tax Foundation — 2025 State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets. 2025 statutory individual income tax brackets for a single filer, including standard deduction and personal exemption. Source.

The computation

For each occupation in each state:

1. State income tax. Apply the state's 2025 single-filer brackets to the BLS median wage, after the standard deduction and personal exemption, less any flat credit. Federal income tax is excluded on purpose — it is the same in every state, so leaving it out isolates the state-level differences the index is about.
2. Take-home. netAnnual = BLS median − state income tax.
3. Cost-of-living adjustment. realAnnual = netAnnual × (100 ÷ RPP), where RPP is the state's 2024 BEA Regional Price Parity. This converts take-home pay into purchasing-power-equivalent dollars.
4. The index. GRPI = realAnnual ÷ nationalRealBaseline × 100, where the baseline is the unweighted mean of realAnnual across the states BLS publishes for that occupation. 100 = the average published state; above 100 means pay goes further.

Worked example — Registered Nurses in California

Coverage and honesty rules

• An occupation is published only if BLS reports an annual median in at least 49 of the 51 states (50 + DC). The cluster covers 371 occupations.
• Only states with a BLS-published median are ranked. Suppressed cells are excluded, never treated as zero.
• No figure is interpolated, modelled or estimated. The computation is deterministic over the published source files.
• The interactive comparator on each page uses a simplified tax estimate (flat rate, or top marginal rate as an upper bound for graduated states) and is clearly labelled as such; the pre-published rankings use the full bracket math described above.

Freshness

BLS OEWS publishes annually; BEA Regional Price Parities publish annually; state income tax brackets change at most yearly. This cluster is re-dated on each BLS OEWS release. Current vintage: OEWS May 2025 state estimates, BEA RPP 2024 (US = 100), tax year 2025. Last built 2026-06-19.