Fayetteville vs Fort Smith

How to read this matchup

Reading the Fayetteville vs Fort Smith Comparison

Fayetteville (AR) and Fort Smith (AR) 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 91.4 for Fayetteville against 85.9 for Fort Smith, a 5.5-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 $1,347/mo in Fayetteville and $937/mo in Fort Smith, a $410/mo difference that compounds to $4,920 over a year.

On wages, BLS OES reports a median salary of $59,645 across 257,840 jobs in Fayetteville against $53,744 across 89,060 jobs in Fort Smith. Adjusted through the BEA cost-of-living lens, $100,000 earned in Fayetteville carries the same local purchasing power as $94,018 in Fort Smith - 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 580.1 per 100,000 residents in AR vs 580.1 in AR, with property-crime rates of 1939.5 and 1939.5 respectively.

Schools are reported at the state tier by NCES: AR lists 1,069 public schools at a 13.6:1 student-teacher ratio, while AR lists 1,069 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, Fayetteville and Fort Smith 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.