Missouri vs Montana

Reading the Missouri vs Montana Comparison

Missouri and Montana are compared here using the state-tier cuts of the same federal feeds that supply the metro pages, BEA Regional Price Parities, HUD Fair Market Rent averages, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics rolled up to the state, FBI Uniform Crime Reports at state resolution, NCES school counts, and Department of Labor childcare cost filings. The overall cost index is 90.8 in Missouri against 94.6 in Montana, a 3.8-point gap on a scale where 100 is the national average, points above 100 mean goods and services cost more than the typical U.S. bundle, points below mean less. Two-bedroom Fair Market Rent averages $972/mo in Missouri vs $1,335/mo in Montana, a statewide headline that masks wide intra-state spread, rural counties and core metros inside the same state often differ by a factor of two or more.

BLS reports a median salary of $67,599 across 2,897,890 jobs in Missouri versus $65,917 across 499,050 jobs in Montana. After adjusting through BEA Regional Price Parities, $100,000 earned in Missouri has the same in-state purchasing power as $104,215 in Montana - the single most important lens for comparing nominal salaries between states, because wages and rents usually move together. On public safety, FBI UCR reports violent-crime rates of 463.3 per 100,000 residents in Missouri vs 426.4 in Montana, with property-crime rates of 1971.6 and 1645.6 respectively, state-level rates blend urban, suburban and rural incidence, so local readings inside either state will deviate substantially from these averages.

NCES reports 2,321 public schools in Missouri at a 12.9:1 student-teacher ratio against 826 schools at 12.1:1 in Montana. Charter share, a signal of school-market structure, is 3.5% in Missouri vs 0.0% in Montana. The practical frame: no two states score the same across cost, housing, wages, safety, and schools at once, and a state that "wins" on one dimension routinely loses on another. The tables below break each dimension out so a household can weight the ones that matter for its own situation, cost-of-living purchasing power for retirees, schools for families, wages for career relocators, rent for renters not buying, rather than collapsing them into a single winner-takes-all verdict. All figures trace back to federal agencies named in each section.