Best Metros for Physician Assistants in 2026: New York Leads, High-Paying California Hubs Dominate the Top 10

Across all U.S. physician assistants, LaborCove’s national benchmark shows a median annual salary of $135,880 and employment of 162,150. National projected employment growth for PAs is 20.4%, which describes the occupation’s overall outlook rather than conditions in any one metro. Within that national context, LaborCove’s top 10 metros combine different levels of salary, employment, and Geography Score. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ holds the #1 LaborCove rank with the highest Geography Score in the list, while San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA records the highest median salary among these metros but ranks #2 overall. This illustrates that the LaborCove Geography Score is not determined by salary alone. Employment size among the top metros also varies substantially. New York-Newark-Jersey City has the largest employment count in this group at 16,800, while Yuba City, CA reports 40 employed PAs. These differences indicate that high-ranking markets can represent both very large and much smaller employment centers, depending on the metro.

LaborCove’s national benchmarks for physician assistants show a median annual salary of $135,880 and total employment of 162,150. National projected employment growth for the occupation is 20.4%, which describes the expected change in physician assistant employment across the country. Because these are national figures, they should be used as broad reference points when looking at metro-level results. The metro data that follows focuses on differences in salary, employment count, and LaborCove Geography Score across specific locations rather than applying the national growth rate to individual metros.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ranks #1 among the 349 geographies in the dataset, with a LaborCove Geography Score of 72.69. Within the top 10, this is the highest Geography Score reported. For compensation, New York-Newark-Jersey City has a median salary of $167,650 for physician assistants, which is higher than the national median of $135,880. On employment, the metro reports 16,800 physician assistant jobs, compared with the national employment figure of 162,150. Among the top 10 metros listed, New York-Newark-Jersey City also has the largest employment count. This combination of a high Geography Score, median pay above the national level, and the largest employment count in the top 10 makes New York-Newark-Jersey City numerically distinct within LaborCove’s rankings for physician assistants.

The two California tech-oriented metros in the top three—San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA—stand out on median salary. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara reports a median salary of $223,640 for physician assistants, while San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont shows $184,380. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ranks #2 overall with a LaborCove Geography Score of 60.85 and an employment count of 1,030. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 49.36 and employment of 1,830. In this pair, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont has the larger employment count, while San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has the higher median salary and higher Geography Score. Both metros have median salaries higher than the national benchmark of $135,880. At the same time, New York-Newark-Jersey City—despite its lower median salary than San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara—holds the #1 rank with a higher Geography Score, underscoring that the LaborCove Geography Score is not a simple ordering of salaries.

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA ranks #4 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 44.78, a median salary of $161,890, and an employment count of 3,890. Compared with New York-Newark-Jersey City, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has a lower median salary and a smaller employment count. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA ranks #9 with a Geography Score of 40.48, a median salary of $165,160, and an employment count of 1,370. Among these two Southern California metros, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim has the larger employment count, while San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad has a slightly higher median salary. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, although outside California, provides a useful coastal comparison at rank #8. It reports a median salary of $167,290, which is higher than the national median and close to New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $167,650, along with an employment count of 1,920 and a Geography Score of 42.21.

Several of the top 10 metros pair smaller employment counts with median salaries that exceed the national benchmark. Bakersfield-Delano, CA ranks #5 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 42.87, a median salary of $198,070, and an employment count of 350. Yuba City, CA ranks #7 with a Geography Score of 42.55, a median salary of $183,460, and an employment count of 40. Vallejo, CA holds rank #10 with a Geography Score of 39.09, a median salary of $179,520, and an employment count of 150. Fort Collins-Loveland, CO appears at rank #6 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 42.73 and a median salary of $134,260. Its median salary is slightly below the national median of $135,880, and its employment count is not supplied in the data. Across these smaller employment metros, the data show that high rankings and above-national salaries can occur in markets with hundreds or even dozens of reported physician assistant positions, rather than only in the largest employment centers.

LaborCove builds these metro rankings for physician assistants using authoritative labor-market data for median annual salary, employment counts, and its proprietary LaborCove Geography Score. The Geography Score is used to order metros, with Rank #1 representing the highest score among the supplied geographies. For this Insight, we focus on the top 10 metros by LaborCove Geography Score out of 349 geographies with available data. National median salary, national employment, and the national projected employment growth rate of 20.4% for physician assistants provide overall context but are not applied as metro-level growth estimates. Career decisions should weigh these rankings alongside individual priorities such as preferred region, commute, and other non-labor-market factors that are outside the scope of LaborCove’s quantitative data.