Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Cicero's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Cicero?
Your $100,000 in Cicero has the same purchasing power as $96,330 in the average US city. You'd need $3,670 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 Cicero's cost index of 104, sorted by closest match.
Cicero has a handful of real selling points, and they're not the kind of thing you find in a brochure. The labor market runs tight and safer than the typical us city are the headliners, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The rest is below.
The unemployment rate in Cicero sits at roughly 3.9%, 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.
Reported crime in Cicero comes in around 1,870 per 100,000 — under the national baseline of about 3,500. Worth digging into specific neighborhoods before settling on one, but the city-level picture is on the safer side.
With a Walk Score of 85/100, Cicero 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. Transit Score comes in at 64/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Bike Score of 67/100 in Cicero. 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.
Reasons are pulled from Cicero'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.
Yes — and a lot of it. With winter averages near 22°F, Cicero sees real accumulation most years. Salt for the steps, tires that handle ice, and a sense of humor about February are the usual costs of admission.
Properly cold. Cicero's winter sits around 22°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Reliably warm. Cicero's summer averages around 82°F, the kind of heat where you remember to leave the house before noon for outdoor things and accept that the back of your shirt will be wet by lunchtime.
Cicero falls in roughly USDA Zone 7. 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.
Roughly 610 feet (186 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Cicero's reported incident rate of about 1,870 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.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Cicero's index of 104 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Cicero scores 85/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 64 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 $72,667 to live in Cicero 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 Cicero runs about $1,094/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.