Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Wauwatosa's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Wauwatosa?
Your $100,000 in Wauwatosa has the same purchasing power as $103,061 in the average US city. You'd need $3,061 less 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 Wauwatosa's cost index of 97, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Wauwatosa, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. A higher-income labor market than the national norm and low unemployment, plenty of openings lead, plus 4 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The typical household in Wauwatosa pulls in $93,812 — comfortably above the US median. Combined with the cost of living here, the income-to-expense ratio works out better than a quick look at either number in isolation would suggest.
At about 2.2% unemployment, Wauwatosa's labor market is running on the tight side. Easier to land a role, easier to negotiate, easier to leave one job for a better one — the practical things that matter when you're actually looking.
Reported crime in Wauwatosa comes in around 2,810 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.
Bike Score of 74/100 in Wauwatosa. 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 commute time in Wauwatosa runs around 20 minutes one-way — short enough that it doesn't restructure your day. Compared to the 45-plus-minute commutes that are normal in major metros, the difference adds up to a real lifestyle gap.
Wauwatosa has a college-educated share of about 61% 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 Wauwatosa'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.
Wauwatosa does winter the real way. Averages around 20°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Wauwatosa's winter sits around 20°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Wauwatosa sits about 80°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Zone 7, give or take a half-zone. Wauwatosa's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 696 feet (212 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Wauwatosa comes in around 2,810 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Wauwatosa's index of 97 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Wauwatosa scores 49 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 44 out of 100. Some neighborhoods buck the citywide average; the dense inner cores are usually noticeably more walkable than the city number suggests.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $67,921 to live in Wauwatosa 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 Wauwatosa runs about $1,312/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.