Best Metros for Financial Analysts in 2026: New York Leads, But Smaller Hubs Pay More

Across the top 10 metros, LaborCove’s rankings highlight how salary, employment counts, and Geography Scores do not move in lockstep. The New York-Newark-Jersey City metro combines the highest Geography Score and the largest reported employment, but it does not have the highest median salary. Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury reports the highest median salary in the top 10 while ranking fifth. Several metros, including Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, sit between New York and Naples-Marco Island on both pay and score, illustrating that analysts can find nationally competitive compensation in a range of markets. Because Prescott Valley-Prescott, Rochester, and Naples-Marco Island lack reported employment data, the LaborCove rankings for those metros should be interpreted as reflecting the metrics available rather than a full picture of local job counts. Nationally, the occupation’s projected 5.7% employment growth provides a broad context for these metro-level comparisons, but that projection is not broken out by city in the supplied data.

Nationally, financial and investment analysts earn a median annual salary of $102,740. Within the top 10 metros, several locations report median salaries above that level, including New York-Newark-Jersey City at $128,930, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at $144,910, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at $130,520, Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury at $158,310, Boston-Cambridge-Newton at $117,520, Rochester at $105,270, and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue at $124,790. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, at $102,260, and Naples-Marco Island, at $100,680, both report median salaries close to the national figure but still below the national median. The only metro in the top 10 with a higher median salary than Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury is not identified in the supplied data, so within this set Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury has the highest reported pay. The occupation’s projected national employment growth rate of 5.7% provides a broad backdrop: it characterizes the occupation across the entire U.S. labor market rather than any particular city. No metro-level growth rates are provided in this dataset, so the top 10 rankings should be understood as reflecting current salary, employment counts where supplied, and Geography Scores rather than projected local growth.

New York-Newark-Jersey City ranks #1 in the LaborCove metro results, with a Geography Score of 78.77. This score is well above the other top 10 metros, whose scores range from 57.54 for Prescott Valley-Prescott down to 46.44 for Naples-Marco Island. With 53,870 financial and investment analysts, New York-Newark-Jersey City also has the largest reported employment count among the listed metros. The next-highest reported employment is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim at 19,600, followed by Boston-Cambridge-Newton at 13,010 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at 9,910. New York’s median salary of $128,930 is above the national median of $102,740 and higher than Boston’s $117,520, Los Angeles’s $102,260, and Seattle’s $124,790, but below Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury’s $158,310 and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara’s $144,910. The combination of the highest Geography Score and the largest reported employment count makes New York distinct in this top 10 set, even though other metros exceed it on pay alone.

Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury reports the highest median salary in the top 10, at $158,310, and ranks #5 with a Geography Score of 52.79. Its employment count of 2,550 is smaller than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 53,870 and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s 19,600, and also smaller than Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s 13,010 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 9,910. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, ranked #3, has a median salary of $144,910, which is higher than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $128,930. Its employment of 3,880 is larger than Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury’s 2,550 but smaller than the reported counts for New York-Newark-Jersey City, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, ranked #4 with a Geography Score of 53.23, has a median salary of $130,520. That figure is higher than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $128,930 and Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s $117,520 and is also well above the national median of $102,740. These comparisons show that several metros offer higher median pay than the #1-ranked New York metro while placing lower in the overall LaborCove Geography ranking.

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, ranked #6 with a Geography Score of 48.85, has a median salary of $117,520 and reported employment of 13,010. Its median salary is higher than the national median of $102,740 and higher than Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s $102,260 and Naples-Marco Island’s $100,680, but lower than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $128,930 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s $130,520. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim ranks #8 with a Geography Score of 47.89, a median salary of $102,260, and employment of 19,600. Its employment count is larger than Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s 13,010 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 9,910 but smaller than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 53,870. Its median salary is slightly below the national median of $102,740. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, ranked #9 with a Geography Score of 47.03, reports a median salary of $124,790 and employment of 6,170. Seattle’s median salary is higher than the national median and higher than Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s $117,520 and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s $102,260. Its employment count sits between San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara’s 3,880 and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont’s 9,910.

Prescott Valley-Prescott is ranked #2 with a Geography Score of 57.54 and a median salary of $135,680. This salary is higher than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $128,930 and Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s $117,520 and also higher than the national median of $102,740. Employment data for Prescott Valley-Prescott is not supplied, so its ranking cannot be directly compared on that metric. Rochester, ranked #7 with a Geography Score of 47.94, has a median salary of $105,270, which is above the national median and above Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s $102,260 and Naples-Marco Island’s $100,680. Employment for Rochester is not reported in the supplied data. Naples-Marco Island, ranked #10 with a Geography Score of 46.44, has the lowest Geography Score among the top 10 metros and a median salary of $100,680. That salary is below the national median as well as below Boston-Cambridge-Newton’s $117,520 and New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $128,930. Employment for Naples-Marco Island is also not provided. These three metros illustrate that a strong or weak LaborCove Geography Score within this top 10 list does not depend solely on the presence of an employment count in the dataset.

LaborCove builds its rankings from authoritative labor‑market data combined with the proprietary LaborCove Geography Score, which summarizes how each location performs on the underlying metrics available for the occupation. For this article, we use the supplied national figures for financial and investment analysts—median annual salary, total employment, and national projected employment growth—as context. At the metro level, we rely on the provided median salary, employment counts where available, and LaborCove Geography Scores and ranks. Because the internal weighting of each metric within the Geography Score is not disclosed, this Insight focuses on observable differences in salary, employment counts, and scores rather than speculating about why one metro ranks above another. Readers should interpret the rankings alongside their own priorities, including non‑quantified factors that are outside the scope of the LaborCove data.