Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Lakewood's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Lakewood?
Your $100,000 in Lakewood has the same purchasing power as $72,743 in the average US city. You'd need $27,257 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 Lakewood's cost index of 137, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Lakewood? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly paychecks here run high and lower-than-average crime numbers, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
Lakewood's typical household earns $113,030, 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.
Reported crime in Lakewood comes in around 2,814 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 citywide Walk Score of 71/100, Lakewood sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Bike Score of 67/100 in Lakewood. 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 Lakewood'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.
It's rare. Winters in Lakewood run about 50°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 50°F mean Lakewood skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Lakewood sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 10. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 10 or colder should survive a typical winter in Lakewood. (The estimate is derived from our winter-temperature data; the official USDA map uses station-level annual minimums and may differ by half a zone.)
Around 59 feet (18 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Lakewood's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Lakewood comes in around 2,814 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Significantly. Lakewood's index of 137 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 37% above the national baseline. The pattern is familiar: housing eats a large share of incomes, and people earning median-equivalent jobs from cheaper metros feel the difference fast.
Lakewood scores 71/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. 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 $96,229 to live in Lakewood 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 Lakewood runs about $2,233/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.