Take a look at this intriguing report by NPR’s Planet money on How Far Your Paycheck Goes.  Being a native and resident of Minnesota, our town of Rochester caught my eye atop the right side of the graphic on incomes.  My guess is that the dominant employer—the Mayo Clinic–pays a lot of money for its medicos, who then get a lot of bag for their buck being in a relatively rural region.

On the other side of these “what it feels like” income-comparisons Washington DC fares very poorly after the COLA.  Based on these economic statistics it seems that the optimal strategy for a job seeker would be to get a federal-government job, for example—working on HealthCare.gov–allowing the work to be done at a distance and then take up residence in Danville, Illinois where money goes a long way in comparison.