Top Metros for Facilities Managers: New York Dominates Scale While Kennewick-Richland Leads in Pay

Across LaborCove’s top 10 metros for facilities managers, the data show that no single metric explains a metro’s overall Geography Score. For example, the highest-ranked market by score, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, does not have the highest median salary, and the metro with the highest median salary, Kennewick-Richland, WA, ranks eighth overall. National figures provide important context. Several top metros post median salaries above the national median of $106,660, and some combine that with relatively large employment counts. Others feature smaller employment totals but higher pay. Understanding these tradeoffs helps clarify what each metro contributes to the national picture for this occupation.

Nationally, facilities managers earn a median annual salary of $106,660 with employment of 156,180. LaborCove’s top-ranked metro, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, reports a higher median salary of $134,010 and an employment count of 10,210. That makes New York-Newark-Jersey City the largest employment market among all 352 metros in the underlying dataset. Several other top metros also show median salaries above the national median. For example, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA has a median salary of $114,970, while Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN reports $113,150. Both are higher than the national median, though they differ in employment counts: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has 6,630 employed facilities managers, compared with 6,790 in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin. At the same time, some metros combine high rankings with salaries closer to the national figure. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV, ranked ninth, has a median salary of $109,860, which is above the national median but below several other top metros with higher pay levels.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ holds the #1 LaborCove Geography Score at 79.53, ahead of all other listed metros. Its median salary of $134,010 is higher than the national median of $106,660. It also has the largest employment count among the top metros at 10,210, and this value matches the largest employment market figure supplied for any metro in the broader dataset. Compared with other large markets in the top 10, New York-Newark-Jersey City pairs its higher score and employment count with relatively strong pay. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, ranked #2, has a Geography Score of 58.61 and an employment count of 6,630, both below New York-Newark-Jersey City. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN, ranked #7, also has a smaller employment count at 6,790 and a lower median salary of $113,150 than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $134,010. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV each appear in the top 10 as sizable East Coast markets. Boston-Cambridge-Newton shows employment of 4,580, while Washington-Arlington-Alexandria reports 4,190, compared with New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 10,210. All three metros have median salaries above the national figure, but only New York-Newark-Jersey City ranks first in LaborCove’s Geography Score among these.

Several West Coast metros in the top 10 combine relatively high median salaries with strong LaborCove Geography Scores. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, ranked #3, has a median salary of $145,000 and a Geography Score of 58.42. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA, ranked #4, reports a median salary of $134,230 and a Geography Score of 57.10. Both median salaries are higher than the national median of $106,660. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, ranked #6, stands out for its median salary of $149,490, which is higher than the median salaries in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, as well as above the national median. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue’s Geography Score of 56.80 is close to those of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, while its employment count of 1,830 is smaller than the 3,100 reported for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, ranked #2, also has a median salary of $114,970, above the national median, and an employment count of 6,630. That is a larger employment total than the 1,460 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and the 3,100 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, underscoring that high-paying West Coast metros differ meaningfully in both pay and employment scale.

Kennewick-Richland, WA, ranked #8, presents a distinct profile among the top metros. It has a median salary of $157,120, which is higher than every other listed metro’s median salary, including Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue at $149,490 and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at $145,000. Kennewick-Richland’s median salary is also higher than the national median of $106,660. At the same time, its employment count of 90 is much smaller than the counts reported for the larger metros in the ranking. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue’s combination of a median salary of $149,490 and employment of 1,830 illustrates another case where pay is substantially above the national median, while employment is modest relative to locations such as New York-Newark-Jersey City or Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim. These contrasts show that some high-paying markets in the top 10 operate at a smaller scale than the largest metros by employment. Because LaborCove’s Geography Score aggregates multiple factors, high pay alone does not guarantee a top overall rank. Kennewick-Richland’s Geography Score of 52.05 places it eighth, below metros such as Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, even though Kennewick-Richland has the highest listed median salary.

LaborCove’s top 10 metros demonstrate that the Geography Score does not simply track either salary or employment rank. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, with a median salary of $134,010 and employment of 10,210, holds the top score of 79.53. Yet Kennewick-Richland, WA, with a higher median salary of $157,120, ranks eighth with a score of 52.05. Similarly, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, ranks second in the overall list with a Geography Score of 58.61, even though its median salary of $114,970 is lower than those in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, and Kennewick-Richland. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN, ranked seventh with a Geography Score of 56.31, has a lower median salary of $113,150 than Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH at $127,400, despite placement below Boston-Cambridge-Newton in the ranking. These patterns underline that LaborCove’s metro rankings are based on a composite Geography Score. For facilities managers comparing locations, the rankings, salaries, employment counts, and the national context can be used together to understand how each metro differs, while recognizing that individual career priorities may emphasize different aspects of the data.

LaborCove builds its metro rankings for facilities managers using authoritative U.S. labor-market data and the proprietary LaborCove Geography Score. For this article, national and metro-level salary and employment figures are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025. The report year of 2026 reflects LaborCove’s product and publication cycle and is not the underlying OEWS observation year. National projected employment growth of 3.8% for facilities managers is a separate occupational projection and is not an OEWS observation. It applies to the occupation nationally and is not a forecast for any particular state or metro area. The Geography Score summarizes how each metro performs in LaborCove’s methodology, but the internal weighting of salary, employment, and other factors is not disclosed in this evidence. Rankings should be interpreted as one structured input to career planning rather than a prescription. Individual decisions should also account for personal circumstances and preferences that fall outside the scope of this dataset.