Top Metros for Human Resources Managers: New York Leads as California Cities Dominate High-Pay Rankings

Across U.S. metros, LaborCove’s results show that the best markets for human resources managers are not interchangeable. Some metros in the top 10 lean toward very high pay with smaller employment counts, while others combine substantial employment with salaries closer to the national median. At the national level, human resources managers have a median annual salary of $149,280, national employment of 220,660, and a projected national employment growth rate of 5.0%. Within that context, every top-10 metro has a higher median salary than the national figure, but they vary widely in employment scale and in their LaborCove Geography Scores. LaborCove’s ranking of 358 metros places New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ at the top, followed by three California metros in the next three positions. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX rounds out the top 10 with the lowest Geography Score in this group, illustrating that a metro can still make the top tier even when it trails the leading markets on LaborCove’s composite measure.

For human resources managers nationally, LaborCove reports a median annual salary of $149,280 and total employment of 220,660. The national projected employment growth rate for this occupation is 5.0%, which serves as a broad indication of expected change in HR manager employment across the United States as a whole. This projection is national-only and is not assigned to any individual state or metropolitan area. Against this backdrop, each of the top 10 metros in LaborCove’s ranking shows a median salary above the national figure, but their employment counts cover a wide range when compared with one another and with the national total.

Among the top 10 metros, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA has the highest reported median salary for human resources managers at $220,460. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA follows at $209,340, both clearly above the national median of $149,280. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, ranked #1 overall, reports a median salary of $185,100. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH is close to that level at $184,990, while Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV stands at $177,960. At the lower end of the salary range within the top 10, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX has a median salary of $140,890. This is the only top-10 metro with a median salary below the national median, while still appearing in the top tier of LaborCove’s metro rankings for this occupation.

The largest employment market among the top 10 metros is New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ, with 18,480 human resources manager jobs. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN has the next-highest employment count in this group at 10,810. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA reports 9,070 HR manager jobs, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX at 7,970 and Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH at 6,480. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV has 6,280. On the smaller side of the top-10 employment distribution, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA has 2,800 HR manager jobs and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA reports 3,200, illustrating that a metro can rank highly in LaborCove’s results even with a comparatively modest employment count.

LaborCove’s Geography Score provides a composite view of each metro’s labor-market characteristics for human resources managers. Among the top 10, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has the highest Geography Score at 79.97, placing it first overall. The next three positions all belong to California metros: San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA with a score of 63.25; San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA at 62.06; and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA at 57.54. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH follows with a Geography Score of 56.93. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX ranks #10 among the 358 metros considered, with a Geography Score of 47.64. This is slightly below Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA at 47.74 and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA at 48.09, underscoring that Geography Score differences within the top 10 can be relatively narrow even as rankings change.

The top metros combine salary, employment, and Geography Score in different ways. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ pairs the largest employment count in this group, at 18,480, with a median salary of $185,100 and the highest Geography Score of 79.97. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA shows the highest median salary at $220,460 but a smaller employment count of 2,800 and a Geography Score of 63.25, compared with New York-Newark-Jersey City’s higher score. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA has a median salary of $209,340 and employment of 4,960, accompanied by a Geography Score of 62.06. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX illustrates another combination: a relatively large employment count of 7,970 paired with a median salary of $140,890—the lowest in this top-10 group—and a Geography Score of 47.64. These contrasts highlight how metros can reach similar overall ranks through different mixes of pay levels, employment counts, and Geography Scores.

LaborCove builds its metro rankings for human resources managers from authoritative U.S. labor-market data combined with its proprietary Geography Score methodology. For this article, national and metro salary and employment figures for human resources managers (occupation 11-3121) are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025. The report year 2026 reflects LaborCove’s product year, not the underlying observation date. The national projected employment growth rate of 5.0% represents a separate nationwide occupational projection for human resources managers. It is not an OEWS observation and is not a forecast for any specific state or metro area. LaborCove’s Geography Score summarizes multiple labor-market indicators into a single value that supports ranking geographies, but the exact contribution of each component metric to the score is not disclosed here. Rankings should be used alongside individual career priorities, such as preferred industries, employers, or non-labor factors that are outside the scope of this data-driven analysis. Geographic projected employment growth rates are not supplied, so this article does not compare future growth across metros and instead focuses on the observed salary, employment, and Geography Score values for each location.