A surprising national study has found that a worker's paycheck stretches further in Austin than in any other major metro area in the country.
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos ranked No. 1 nationwide for the amount of median earnings residents have left after paying for basic necessities, according to SmartAsset's newly released "2026 Paycheck Power Rankings" report.
To determine where Americans have the "strongest paycheck power," SmartAsset's analysts calculated the living wage across the 100 most populous U.S. metros — defined as "the earnings required to afford a minimum but adequate lifestyle" — and weighed this against the median income in each metro. Rankings were determined by the percentage of the median worker’s earnings needed to pay for the necessities of living.
A resident in the Greater Austin area needs to make $49,317 to afford basic necessities, the report found, while the median worker earns an estimated $76,322 in income annually.
That means Austin-area workers generally spend about 65 percent of their paychecks on necessities, the lowest share in the country.
"That leaves the median Austin worker with $27,005 for discretionary spending and retirement savings," the report said.
Divided further, that comes out to about $2,250 per month pre-tax for things like vacations, dining out, savings, and other uses.
The costs included in the living-wage calculation cover "food prepared and consumed at home, transportation, clothing, basic personal care products, cleaning supplies, various miscellaneous expenses," and housing costs represented as "the 40th-percentile gross rent for a studio apartment for single people with no children."
No other Texas metro could come close to Austin with their paycheck power, the study found. Workers in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands (No. 30), San Antonio-New Braunfels (No. 37), and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (No. 56) all spend more than 70 percent of their income just to afford life's necessities.
El Paso (No. 77) and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission (No. 91) rank at the bottom of the national list where residents spend the largest amount of their paychecks "just to survive." After spending 81.1 percent of their total annual income on basic necessities, El Paso workers have just under $9,000 pre-tax income left over for discretionary spending. In McAllen, workers have $4,763 left over after spending nearly 89 percent of their total income on basic necessities.
The top 10 U.S. metros where workers' median income stretch the furthest are:
- No. 1 – Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas
- No. 2 – Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, Virginia
- No. 3 – Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Maryland
- No. 4 – Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington
- No. 5 – Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota
- No. 6 – San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, California
- No. 7 – Toledo, Ohio
- No. 8 – Cincinnati, Ohio
- No. 9 – Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, Connecticut
- No. 10 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
