Erie vs Johnstown

How to read this matchup

Reading the Erie vs Johnstown Comparison

Erie (PA) and Johnstown (PA) are assembled here from the same federal data pipeline, BEA Regional Price Parities, HUD Fair Market Rents, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, FBI Uniform Crime Reports, NCES public-school counts, and EPA environmental indicators, so every number on this page is directly comparable. The overall cost index reads 91.0 for Erie against 85.9 for Johnstown, a 5.0-point gap on a scale where 100 equals the U.S. average. HUD's 2-bedroom Fair Market Rent, the figure used to set housing-choice voucher payment standards, is $1,212/mo in Erie and $1,035/mo in Johnstown, a $177/mo difference that compounds to $2,124 over a year.

On wages, BLS OES reports a median salary of $59,724 across 113,330 jobs in Erie against $57,143 across 42,320 jobs in Johnstown. Adjusted through the BEA cost-of-living lens, $100,000 earned in Erie carries the same local purchasing power as $94,479 in Johnstown - the most honest way to read the salary headline, because nominal wages and rents move together in tight metros. State-level violent crime, the most reliable geographic tier FBI UCR publishes, is 249.5 per 100,000 residents in PA vs 249.5 in PA, with property-crime rates of 1457.1 and 1457.1 respectively.

Schools are reported at the state tier by NCES: PA lists 2,930 public schools at a 13.6:1 student-teacher ratio, while PA lists 2,930 schools at 13.6:1, a signal of class-size staffing, though individual district and school-level variation within each state is substantial. When these pieces are read together rather than in isolation, Erie and Johnstown are not simply "cheaper" or "more expensive" - they trade across dimensions, and which metro wins depends on whether your household optimizes for rent, wages, schools, childcare, safety, or environment. Treat the tables below as inputs to that trade-off, not as a single ranking.