10 Cities Where the Most Women Earn 6-Figure Salaries

This story originally appeared on SmartAsset.com.

According to Census Bureau data from 2018, there are approximately 5.43 million full-time working women in the U.S. earning at least $100,000.

The opportunity to attain higher salaries affects not only their ability to spend and budget in the short term, but also to achieve other financial goals like investing in property and saving for retirement. That’s why SmartAsset wanted to find out where in the country the most women are earning six figures.

To find the cities with the most female six-figure earners, we looked at data on the 100 largest U.S. cities. For details on our data sources and how we put all the information together to create our final rankings, check out the data and methodology section next.

Data and methodology

To find the cities with the most female six-figure earners, SmartAsset considered data for the 100 largest U.S. cities across the following two metrics:

• Percentage of female workers who are six-figure earners. This is the percentage of full-time female workers who earn at least $100,000 out of the total number of full-time female workers.
• Percentage of six-figure earners who are women. This is the percentage of full-time female workers earning at least $100,000 out of the total number of full-time female workers.

All data comes from the Census Bureau’s 2018 one-year American Community Survey.

First, we ranked each city according to each metric. We then found each city’s average ranking and used this ranking to create our final score. The city with the highest average ranking received a score of 100, and the city with the lowest average ranking received a score of 0.

10. Sacramento, California

The No. 10 city in our analysis is Sacramento, California, which ranks seventh-highest for women as a percentage of all six-figure earners, at 38.83%. The city also ranks within the top third of the study, at 28th-highest, for six-figure earners as a percentage of all female workers, at 13.12%. The median earnings for a full-time working woman in Sacramento is $50,005.

9. Portland, Oregon

The number of workers in Portland, Oregon, earning at least $100,000 as a percentage of all female workers in the city totals 17.31%. Meanwhile, women as a percentage of all six-figure earners totals 36.49%. The median earnings for a full-time working woman in Portland is $53,119.

8. St. Paul, Minnesota

St. Paul, Minnesota, has the smallest raw number of women earning at least $100,000 in our top 10 – just 6,628. That means 12.79% of the 51,820 full-time female workers in the city earn in the six figures, the 31st-highest percentage across all 100 cities we considered.

Furthermore, women comprise 42.09% of all six-figure earners in St. Paul, the second-highest rate for this metric in the study. The median income for full-time working women in St. Paul is $44,301.

7. Chicago

In Chicago, women comprise 37.11% of all six-figure earners, the 12th-highest rate for this metric in the study. The city ranks 18th-highest in terms of six-figure earners as a percentage of all female workers, at 16.30%. The median salary for a full-time female worker in the Windy City is $50,686.

6. New York City

New York City has more than 253,000 female full-time workers earning at least $100,000, by far the largest raw total in the study.

In terms of the metrics we used to create our ranking, New York City places ninth-highest for the percentage of six-figure earners who are women (at 38.52%) and 16th-highest for the percentage of female workers who earn six figures (at 18.30%). The median earnings for a woman working full-time in New York City is $52,107.

5. Boston

Boston has the fourth-highest percentage in the study of six-figure earners who are women, at 39.87%. Furthermore, the city ranks 12th-highest in terms of women workers as a percentage of all workers who earn at least $100,000, at 19.96%. The median earnings for a full-time working woman in Boston is $57,342.

4. Oakland, California

Right across the bay from San Francisco, Oakland, California, has the third-highest percentage in the study of six-figure earners who are women, at 40.63%, and it ranks eighth-highest in the study for the percentage of female workers earning at least $100,000, at 25.17%.

The median earnings for a full-time working woman in Oakland is $61,799. Only Washington, D.C., Arlington, Virginia, and San Francisco have higher median earnings for women among the top 10 cities.

3. San Francisco

Of the 100 largest U.S. cities, San Francisco has the highest percentage of female workers earning six figures, at 40.17%. Furthermore, San Francisco ranks eighth-highest for the percentage of all six-figure earners who are women, at 38.55%. The median earnings for a full-time working woman in San Francisco is $80,879.

2. Arlington, Virginia

Situated right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., Arlington, Virginia ranks as the No. 2 U.S. city for the percentage of women earning at least $100,000.

Six-figure earners comprise 39.28% of all female workers in the city, the second-highest rate for this metric in the study. And of all the city’s six-figure earners, 39.66% are women. The median salary for a full-time working woman in Arlington is $80,892.

1. Washington, D.C.

The nation’s capital tops this list, with 43.05% of six-figure earners who are women, the top rate for this metric in the study. The percentage of female workers in the city earning at least six figures is 30.82%, the fourth-highest rate for this metric in the study. The median earnings for full-time working women in the nation’s capital is $70,911.