Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Arlington's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Arlington?
Your $100,000 in Arlington has the same purchasing power as $79,681 in the average US city. You'd need $20,319 more here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Arlington's cost index of 126, sorted by closest match.
Arlington has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. A high-income city, even by US standards and the labor market runs tight are the headliners, plus 5 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
Arlington's typical household earns $136,312, which puts it in the top tier of US cities for household income. The bottom of the wage distribution isn't necessarily different from anywhere else, but the median and above sit meaningfully higher.
The unemployment rate in Arlington sits at roughly 3.6%, which is a tight labor market by US standards. Salaries get nudged up faster, openings are easier to find, and switching jobs is less of a leap than it is in a softer market.
The reported crime rate in Arlington runs about 612 per 100,000 residents — meaningfully below the national norm. People who care about safety as a baseline rather than a feature tend to land in cities with numbers like these.
With a Walk Score of 86/100, Arlington is in the category where car ownership becomes a real choice rather than the default. Errands work on foot, the city's built dense enough that things are actually close together, and the parking-and-gas budget can quietly disappear.
Bike Score of 77/100 in Arlington. That puts it in the small group of US cities where you can do groceries, commute, and run errands on a bike without it being a feat of urban survival.
Average AQI in Arlington comes in around 34, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Arlington has a college-educated share of about 74% among adults 25+, which is higher than the national norm. It shows up in the local job mix, in the school district's reputation, and in the kind of conversations you have at the coffee shop.
Reasons are pulled from Arlington's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
Arlington gets a handful of meaningful snow days each year. Winters average about 26°F — cold enough for several inches at a time, warm enough for everything to melt between storms.
A real winter, but not a punishing one. Arlington averages roughly 26°F in winter, with the coldest mornings dipping into the single digits a few times a year and most days landing somewhere between "chilly" and "actually cold".
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Arlington sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Arlington falls in roughly USDA Zone 8. The zone classification is based on average annual minimum temperatures, so it's the right lookup for whether perennials and trees will overwinter here. Note that this is approximate from our winter-temperature data — check the USDA map for the exact zone before betting an expensive plant on it.
Around 69 feet (21 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Arlington's altitude shows up in daily life.
Hurricane season covers June through November, with peak activity in late summer and early fall. For Arlington, the practical advice is: have a few days of water and supplies on hand from August onward, know your evacuation route, and don't wait for the news to tell you a storm is "probably nothing" — track the cone yourself.
The headline number is reassuring. Arlington's reported incident rate of about 612 per 100,000 is comfortably below the US norm of around 3,500 per 100k. Specific neighborhoods always vary, but the broader picture is on the safer side.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Arlington's composite index is 126 versus 100 for the US, with rent and home prices driving most of the gap. Salaries in higher-paying industries usually move together, but the math still tightens for everyone else.
Arlington scores 86/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 45 out of 100. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $87,850 to live in Arlington the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Arlington runs about $1,902/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.