Top Metros for Data Scientists in 2026: New York Leads Overall While San Jose Pays the Most

Across the 10 highlighted metros, LaborCove’s rankings show that high salaries, larger employment counts, and higher Geography Scores do not always line up in the same place. For example, New York-Newark-Jersey City holds the #1 overall rank and the largest listed employment count, while San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont post higher median salaries but lower overall ranks. This illustrates that the LaborCove Geography Score reflects a broader combination of factors than salary alone. Nationally, data scientists have a reported median annual salary of $120,230 and employment of 262,440, with projected national employment growth of 33.5%. The top metros in this article generally sit above the national median salary, and several also show sizable employment counts relative to one another, placing them among the more prominent metro markets in LaborCove’s data for this occupation. Within the top 10, there is also notable variation in Geography Scores. New York-Newark-Jersey City leads with a score of 74.54, while scores for other metros range from 66.57 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara to 45.03 in Tyler, TX. These variations give additional context beyond salary and employment when comparing locations.

At the national level, data scientists have a reported median annual salary of $120,230. National employment for the occupation stands at 262,440 in the supplied data. For context, national employment for data scientists is projected to grow by 33.5%. This figure describes the occupation’s projected growth nationally and is not a metro-level or state-level projection. It provides broad background when interpreting how top metros compare on the static metrics available here, such as salary and employment counts.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ holds the #1 LaborCove ranking for data scientists, with a LaborCove Geography Score of 74.54. The metro reports a median annual salary of $135,980 for data scientists and an employment count of 23,160. Compared with the national median salary of $120,230, New York-Newark-Jersey City’s median salary is higher. The metro’s employment count of 23,160 is also larger than the national largest employment market benchmark of 23,160 reported in the geographic data, which matches New York-Newark-Jersey City’s value and underscores that it is the largest listed employment market among the metros in this evidence. Taken together, New York-Newark-Jersey City combines the highest available Geography Score with the largest reported employment count among the highlighted metros, while also offering a median salary above the national median.

Among the top 10 metros for data scientists, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA reports the highest median annual salary at $185,080. This salary exceeds both the national median of $120,230 and the median salaries in each of the other listed metros. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA follows with a median salary of $170,110, and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA reports $164,740. Despite these higher salaries, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara is ranked #2 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 66.57, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont is ranked #3 with a Geography Score of 66.00. New York-Newark-Jersey City, with a lower median salary of $135,980 than both California metros, holds the #1 rank and a higher Geography Score of 74.54. This contrast shows that a metro can rank higher in LaborCove’s results even when its median salary is lower than that of other metros, indicating that the Geography Score incorporates more than salary alone.

Within the top 10 metros, employment counts vary significantly. New York-Newark-Jersey City reports 23,160 employed data scientists, which is larger than the employment counts listed for the other metros. For example, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont shows employment of 10,460, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington reports 10,120, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has 9,850, and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria reports 9,260. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue has 8,370 employed data scientists in the data, and Boston-Cambridge-Newton reports 7,930. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara’s employment count, at 6,060, is smaller than each of these metros’ employment counts while still appearing in the #2 overall ranking. Employment for Charlottesville, VA, and Tyler, TX is not supplied, so no employment comparisons can be made that involve those two metros. These differences show that among the metros with available employment data, the top-ranked locations include both larger and smaller employment counts, underscoring that a metro’s rank in this list is not determined by employment alone.

LaborCove Geography Scores provide another way to differentiate the top metros. New York-Newark-Jersey City leads with a score of 74.54. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara follows with 66.57, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont is close behind at 66.00. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue has a Geography Score of 59.52, and Charlottesville, VA records 59.35. Further down the top 10, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has a Geography Score of 52.31, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria comes in at 50.52, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington is at 50.39, and Boston-Cambridge-Newton is at 50.19. Tyler, TX rounds out the list at #10 with a Geography Score of 45.03. These scores show a spread of nearly 30 points from New York-Newark-Jersey City at 74.54 to Tyler at 45.03. While the list is limited to 10 metros, this range indicates that even among top-ranked locations, there are measurable differences in the combined factors that LaborCove captures in its Geography Score.

LaborCove builds these metro rankings for data scientists using authoritative labor-market data combined with our internal LaborCove Geography Score. For each metro, we incorporate metrics such as median annual salary, employment counts, and other factors into a single Geography Score and rank the metros from highest to lowest. All projected growth figures cited here are national for the data scientist occupation and are not assigned to any individual metro. Because we do not have metro-level growth projections in this evidence, they are not used in the ranking. These rankings are intended as one input into your planning rather than a prescriptive answer. The quantitative differences in salary, employment, and Geography Scores can highlight how locations compare on those measures, but individual decisions should also consider personal circumstances and priorities that fall outside the scope of LaborCove’s data.