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Salary data from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics

Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other Salary: Merced, CA vs Shreveport-Bossier City, LA

Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other earn a median of $36,310 in Merced, CA and $55,710 in Shreveport-Bossier City, LA. That is a nominal gap of $19,400 (-34.8%), with Shreveport-Bossier City, LA paying more before any cost-of-living adjustment.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2024 estimates. Cost-of-living adjustment uses BEA Regional Price Parities, most recent release.

$36,310
Merced, CA median
$36,947 after COL
$55,710
Shreveport-Bossier City, LA median
$65,722 after COL
-34.8%
Nominal gap
Shreveport-Bossier City, LA leads
-43.8%
Adjusted gap
Shreveport-Bossier City, LA leads after COL

The story behind the numbers

On raw wages, Shreveport-Bossier City, LA pays $19,400 more per year than Merced, CA for personal care and service workers, all other, a gap of +34.8%.

After adjusting for cost of living, Shreveport-Bossier City, LA still comes out ahead, with roughly $28,775 of extra purchasing power (+43.8% real gap). Local prices do not reverse the nominal advantage.

Full breakdown by location

Detailed wage, employment, and cost-of-living figures for personal care and service workers, all other in each location. Click through to the full local salary page for percentiles, outlook, and peer areas.

Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other

Merced, CA

Median salary
$36,310
Mean salary
$37,130
Employment
40
Location quotient
1.10
Jobs per 1,000
0.4
COL-adjusted median
$36,947
Regional Price Parity
98.3%

Exact metro RPP match.

Full Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other page for Merced, CA →

Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other

Shreveport-Bossier City, LA

Median salary
$55,710
Mean salary
$45,110
Employment
90
Location quotient
1.39
Jobs per 1,000
0.6
COL-adjusted median
$65,722
Regional Price Parity
84.8%

Exact metro RPP match.

Full Personal Care And Service Workers, All Other page for Shreveport-Bossier City, LA →

Related pages

Keep digging into personal care and service workers, all other from a different angle.

Common questions about this comparison

What does the cost-of-living adjustment actually do? +

It divides each location's nominal median wage by its Regional Price Parity (RPP), which measures how local prices compare to the national average (100 = national). A wage of $100,000 in an area with RPP 120 has the same purchasing power as roughly $83,000 nationally.

Why would the nominal and adjusted winners disagree? +

High-cost metros often pay higher salaries, but not by enough to fully offset the higher cost of housing, goods, and services. When that happens, the location with the lower nominal wage actually offers more real purchasing power.

What is a location quotient? +

The location quotient measures how concentrated an occupation is in a given area versus the national average. A value of 2.0 means the occupation is twice as common there as nationally. It is a signal of what a metro specializes in.