Everyone wants to be well compensated for their work, but that means the markets for high-salaried jobs can get pretty crowded.

Career.io wanted to know which markets across the US are most and least competitive when it comes to high-paying roles, so they used LinkedIn data to rank cities and states based on how many daily applicants their highly paid jobs received. Jobs were considered to be highly paid if they offered salaries that were at least double the local median annual wage.

The study analyzed the country's 100 most-populated cities, as well as the five most-populated cities in each state. The findings are accurate as of December 2023.

Key Findings:

• The most competitive market overall is Salt Lake City, Utah, where an average of 34.9 applicants apply for each of its highly paid jobs every day.

• When it comes to big cities, the least competitive market for high-paying jobs is Parkersburg, West Virginia, with zero applications identified in the study.

• In the state of New York, the most crowded market is New York City (10.2 daily applications), while the least competitive is Yonkers (0.08).

• California's most competitive market for highly paid jobs is San Jose (29.6), while Bakersfield (0.24) sees the fewest daily applications of the state's most populated cities.

• The country's most competitive state is Utah, which sees 22.6 daily applicants per high-salaried role.

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Via career.io.