Philadelphia vs Vineland

How to read this matchup

Reading the Philadelphia vs Vineland Comparison

Philadelphia (PA) and Vineland (NJ) 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 102.6 for Philadelphia against 96.0 for Vineland, a 6.6-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 $1,810/mo in Philadelphia and $1,673/mo in Vineland, a $137/mo difference that compounds to $1,644 over a year.

On wages, BLS OES reports a median salary of $74,260 across 2,874,190 jobs in Philadelphia against $65,161 across 55,390 jobs in Vineland. Adjusted through the BEA cost-of-living lens, $100,000 earned in Philadelphia carries the same local purchasing power as $93,578 in Vineland - 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 215.7 in NJ, with property-crime rates of 1457.1 and 1395.7 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 NJ lists 2,509 schools at 11.8:1, 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, Philadelphia and Vineland 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.