Top Metro Areas for Claims Adjusters: New York Ranks #1, San Francisco Pays Most

Across the top 10 metros, LaborCove’s results highlight clear differences in how salary, employment scale, and overall Geography Scores align for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont shows the highest supplied median salary in the top 10, while New York-Newark-Jersey City leads both the LaborCove rankings and the employment counts. Several metros, including Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell and Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, have median salaries below the national figure but still earn top-10 Geography Scores, underscoring that the ranking is not a salary-only ordering. Nationally, the occupation’s median annual salary is $78,000, and national employment stands at 324,230. A projected national employment decline of 5.1% provides broader context for the field overall, but LaborCove’s metro-level analysis focuses strictly on the observed salaries, employment counts, and Geography Scores for each location.

At the national level, claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators have a median annual salary of $78,000 and total employment of 324,230. Every top-10 metro in LaborCove’s rankings can be viewed against those two benchmarks. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont has a median salary of $105,340, which is higher than the national median salary of $78,000. New York-Newark-Jersey City and Baltimore-Columbia-Towson also exceed the national median, at $95,980 and $98,700 respectively. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin’s median salary of $78,640 is slightly above the national median salary figure. Other top-10 metros have median pay below the national figure. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell reports a median salary of $75,770, and Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler is lower at $64,370. These differences illustrate that top LaborCove rankings do not require a metro to exceed the national median pay, even for metros with relatively large employment counts.

New York-Newark-Jersey City ranks #1 in LaborCove’s metro list for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators, with the highest LaborCove Geography Score among the supplied metros at 81.29. It also has an employment count of 14,840, which is the largest employment total among the top 10 metros. Compared with other large-employment metros in the top 10, New York-Newark-Jersey City combines its top-ranked Geography Score with relatively high employment counts. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell has 13,830 employed claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators, which is slightly lower than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 14,840. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin report 8,630 and 9,080 employees respectively, both lower than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s employment count. On pay, New York-Newark-Jersey City’s median salary of $95,980 is above the national median of $78,000, but it does not have the highest median salary in the top 10. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s median of $105,340 is higher than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s figure, underscoring that LaborCove’s #1 ranking reflects more than salary alone.

Several metros in the top 10 offer median salaries notably above the national median yet rank below New York-Newark-Jersey City. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont has the highest median salary in the top 10 at $105,340 and holds a LaborCove Geography Score of 60.86, ranking #3 in the list. Its employment count of 3,390 is smaller than the largest-employment metros but still places it within the leading markets. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson’s median salary is $98,700, which is higher than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $95,980. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, however, ranks #7 with a Geography Score of 55.20. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara stands out as well: it has a median salary of $98,230, above New York-Newark-Jersey City’s median, but its LaborCove Geography Score of 53.57 places it at rank #9. These patterns show that metros with higher median salaries than New York-Newark-Jersey City—such as San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara—can still rank lower overall in LaborCove’s metro list. The Geography Score and final ranking reflect a broader evaluation than salary level alone.

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell ranks #2 overall with a LaborCove Geography Score of 64.65 and an employment count of 13,830, close to New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 14,840. Yet Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell’s median salary of $75,770 is lower than the national median of $78,000. This combination places it just behind New York-Newark-Jersey City in the LaborCove rankings despite below-national median pay. Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler has 11,350 employed claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators, giving it one of the larger employment counts in the top 10. Its median salary of $64,370 is below Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell’s $75,770 and below the national median of $78,000. Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler nevertheless appears in the top 10 at rank #10, with a Geography Score of 53.37. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin occupy a middle ground in this group. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington’s median salary of $82,890 is above the national median, and its employment count of 8,630 is smaller than Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell’s 13,830. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin has 9,080 employed claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators and a median salary of $78,640, slightly above the national median salary benchmark.

LaborCove’s Geography Score provides an additional dimension beyond salary and employment counts. New York-Newark-Jersey City’s score of 81.29 is the highest among the top 10 metros, ahead of Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell’s 64.65 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 60.86. These values align with the #1, #2, and #3 rankings but also highlight clear numerical spacing between the top positions. Further down the list, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has a Geography Score of 60.07, just below San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 60.86, with a median salary of $89,070 and employment of 7,540. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington reports a Geography Score of 54.23, below Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s score, along with a median salary of $81,560 and employment of 6,850. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler have Geography Scores of 53.57 and 53.37, respectively, and rank #9 and #10 in the top 10 list. Their scores are lower than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 81.29 and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell’s 64.65, confirming how the Geography Score helps distinguish metros that may be close in some metrics but different in their overall ranking within LaborCove’s framework.

LaborCove builds its metro rankings for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators from authoritative U.S. labor-market data combined with its proprietary Geography Score. For this article, we use Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025 for salaries and employment, together with a separate national projection for occupational employment growth. The LaborCove Geography Score is an aggregate measure that supports metro comparisons; it is reported directly in the evidence for each top-10 metro. This article uses the Geography Score, median annual salary, and employment counts exactly as supplied, without inferring how any one metric contributes to the overall score. The national projected growth rate of -5.1% is a projection for the occupation at the national level only; it is not a forecast for any individual metro area. Because no metro-level projections are supplied, this article does not assign or imply growth rates for specific metros. Readers should interpret these rankings alongside their own priorities, such as preferred regions or non-labor-market considerations, which are outside the scope of LaborCove’s data.