Top Metros for Entertainment and Recreation Managers: New York Leads, but Smaller Markets Pay the Highest Salaries

Across the top 10 metros, LaborCove’s data shows a mix of high-salary smaller markets and large metros with more jobs but more moderate pay relative to the very top. Nationally, entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling, have a median annual salary of $79,520 and employment of 37,980, with a projected national employment growth rate of 7.7%. The metros in this list sit around those national benchmarks in different ways: some emphasize higher pay, others have larger employment counts, and several combine above-national salaries with sizable local workforces. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ holds the #1 LaborCove Geography Score ranking among metros supplied here, while Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN has the largest employment count in the top 10. By contrast, metros such as Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA pair relatively small employment counts with some of the highest median salaries in the group. The rankings also underscore that the highest salary does not automatically translate into the highest overall LaborCove Geography Score. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI, Naples-Marco Island, FL, and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA all have higher median salaries than New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, yet New York-Newark-Jersey City ranks above them on LaborCove’s Geography Score. This divergence highlights that the ranking reflects multiple underlying factors beyond a single metric like pay or employment size.

Nationally, entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling, have a median annual salary of $79,520 and employment of 37,980. The national projected employment growth rate for this occupation is 7.7%, providing a broad context for how the role is expected to change across the country as a whole. When you compare national benchmarks to the top-ranked metros, you see that several locations in the list have median salaries above the national median, while one metro has a median salary below it. Employment counts in individual metros are far smaller than the national total, but they vary meaningfully within the top 10 themselves, from tens of jobs to more than two thousand in a single metro. Because no geographic growth projections are supplied, this article focuses strictly on current salaries, employment counts, and LaborCove Geography Scores, using national projected growth only as overall occupational context rather than as a local forecast.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ranks #1 in LaborCove’s metro list with a Geography Score of 73.41. Its median annual salary for entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling, is $94,390, which is higher than the national median of $79,520. The metro’s employment count of 2,410 for this occupation is also substantially below the national total of 37,980 but places New York among the higher-employment metros in this top-10 group. Compared directly with Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN, which holds the #2 rank, New York has a higher median salary—$94,390 versus Chicago’s $80,570—while Chicago has the larger employment count, with 2,530 roles compared with New York’s 2,410. Despite having slightly lower employment, New York’s higher LaborCove Geography Score of 73.41 versus Chicago’s 63.26 keeps it at the top of the overall ranking. The comparison with Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA (#3) also highlights differences in pay and employment. New York’s median salary of $94,390 is higher than Los Angeles’s $78,200, and New York’s employment count of 2,410 exceeds Los Angeles’s 2,200. New York additionally has a higher Geography Score of 73.41 compared with Los Angeles’s 60.30, illustrating how it leads on multiple measured dimensions within this dataset.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ranks #2 in LaborCove’s Geography Score results with a score of 63.26 and has the largest employment count in the top 10 at 2,530 entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling. This employment figure is slightly higher than the 2,410 roles in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ and higher than the 2,200 roles in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, ranked #3 with a Geography Score of 60.30, has a median salary of $78,200, which is lower than the national median of $79,520. That contrasts with Chicago’s median salary of $80,570, which is higher than both the national median and Los Angeles’s median. Despite these salary differences, Los Angeles still appears near the top of the ranking, reflecting a balance of factors in its overall Geography Score. Comparing Chicago and Los Angeles also underscores that a higher employment count does not necessarily produce a higher Geography Score. Chicago’s employment count of 2,530 is larger than Los Angeles’s 2,200, and Chicago’s Geography Score of 63.26 is also higher than Los Angeles’s 60.30, while both remain below New York’s top score of 73.41.

Several metros in the top 10 deliver notably high median salaries alongside smaller employment counts. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI, ranked #4, has a median salary of $123,780 and employment of 320. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, ranked #5, has a median salary of $106,830 and employment of 400. Both of these metros have median salaries well above the national median of $79,520. Naples-Marco Island, FL, ranked #9 with a Geography Score of 49.10, has a median salary of $120,410 and an employment count of 90. Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA, ranked #10 with a Geography Score of 48.37, has a median salary of $116,000 and an employment count of 30. In each of these cases—Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Naples-Marco Island, and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater—the metro’s median salary exceeds New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $94,390. These comparisons demonstrate that some of the highest salaries in the list are found in metros that have smaller employment counts than the very large markets. For example, Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington’s employment count of 320 is lower than New York’s 2,410, Chicago’s 2,530, and Los Angeles’s 2,200, yet its median salary of $123,780 is higher than the median salaries in each of those three larger-employment metros.

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA ranks #6 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 50.61. It has a median salary of $83,020 and employment of 1,070. Its median salary is higher than the national median of $79,520 and higher than Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s $78,200, while its employment count of 1,070 is lower than Chicago’s 2,530 and New York’s 2,410 but higher than several smaller metros in the list. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH holds the #7 spot with a Geography Score of 50.30, a median salary of $94,290, and employment of 780. Its median salary is higher than the national median of $79,520, and it is slightly lower than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s median salary of $94,390. Boston’s employment count of 780 trails San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 1,070 but is higher than the employment counts in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Naples-Marco Island, and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL, ranked #8 with a Geography Score of 49.32, has a median salary of $96,110 and employment of 900. Its median salary exceeds the national median of $79,520 and is higher than Boston’s $94,290 and New York’s $94,390. Miami’s employment count of 900 is below San Francisco’s 1,070 but above Boston’s 780, positioning it between those two metros on this specific metric even though it holds a lower overall Geography Score than San Francisco.

The top 10 metros for entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling, show a range of combinations across median salary, employment, and LaborCove Geography Scores. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ leads the rankings with the highest Geography Score among the listed metros. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN offers the largest employment count in this set, while several metros such as Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI, Naples-Marco Island, FL, and Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA report some of the highest median salaries in the group. However, these numbers do not capture personal preferences or other local factors that can matter for an individual career decision. The Geography Score and rankings summarize how each metro performs on LaborCove’s measured labor-market indicators, but they do not predict any specific person’s likelihood of being hired or their individual career trajectory. For many readers, the most useful approach is to identify which combination of metrics aligns most closely with their priorities—for example, focusing on metros with salaries above the national median of $79,520, or emphasizing locations with relatively larger local employment counts within this list—and then pairing these data-driven insights with additional research beyond the scope of LaborCove’s dataset.

LaborCove builds these metro rankings for entertainment and recreation managers, except gambling (occupation 11-9072), from authoritative labor-market data combined with the proprietary LaborCove Geography Score. For each metro, we use observed median annual salary, employment counts, and the Geography Score as supplied in our dataset. All occupational salary and employment figures in this article are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025. The report year of 2026 refers to the product and publication cycle, not the underlying OEWS observation date. The national projected employment growth rate of 7.7% cited here is a separate national-level projection for this occupation. It reflects expected change in employment nationally and is not an OEWS observation or a forecast for any individual state or metro. LaborCove’s Geography Score aggregates multiple labor-market characteristics into a single comparable value for each metro area. The exact weighting of inputs is proprietary, and this article does not infer the internal contribution of each metric. Rankings should be interpreted as one input among many in career planning. Individual decisions should also consider personal circumstances and preferences beyond the scope of this dataset.