A live example. Every published profile is built from the same measures, sources and comparisons, and where a source has nothing for a place the page says so.
Where opportunity is strongest
Cities of 100,000 or more ranked by the AreaProfile Opportunity signal, built from Bureau of Labor Statistics labor-market data and Census ACS income and education indicators.
Labor data through July 2026 · income from the 2024 ACS 5-Year release
Where development is accelerating
Cities of 100,000 or more, ranked by the percentage change in residential units authorized over the trailing twelve months against the preceding twelve, from the Census Building Permits Survey.
Data through July 2026
Where public schools stand out
Cities of 20,000 or more ranked by the AreaProfile Schools signal — math and reading proficiency measured against the rest of the same state, plus students per teacher. Every state sets its own cut score, so comparing proficiency within state is the only comparison the data supports.
Directory from the 2024 federal school year · proficiency from the 2018–19 school year assessments
Moving with children?
City profiles carry their public schools wherever the federal file has them: how many, enrollment, students per teacher, proficiency ranked against the rest of the state, and free-lunch eligibility shown beside it — because proficiency tracks the circumstances students arrive with, not only what a school adds.
Fully virtual schools are excluded from every city figure. They enroll students statewide from a single administrative address, and counting them would distort the numbers for a city they do not serve.
Locations with insufficient reporting volume or incomplete comparable periods are excluded, so a large percentage change on a very small base cannot reach these lists. See all rankings and their methodology →
Built from the federal record.
AreaProfile collects public data directly from federal agencies, normalizes it against its own geographic model, keeps the history, and turns it into comparisons you can act on. The numbers you see are ours to explain — every score can be taken apart down to the source record.
Standardized comparison
Percentiles are calculated against locations of the same type, so a ZIP is compared with ZIPs and a city with cities — never against a mismatched cohort.
Visible provenance
Every metric shows its source and its source period. A profile recalculated today does not pretend its 2023 survey data is from today.
Withheld when thin
An Area Score is only produced when enough signals are genuinely available. Where the data is not there, the page says so.
Tools for choosing a place.
The profiles say what a place is like. These help you decide between them. None of them asks for an account, and what you save stays in your browser.
Find places that fit you
Set a rent ceiling from your income, a winter floor and the hazards you want to avoid, weight what matters, and see which cities fit. A place with no published figure for a limit is counted, never guessed at.
Open the Finder →Weigh up a shortlist
Save up to four places from any profile and see them side by side, with the best figure in each row marked. A link carries the list to someone else.
Open your shortlist →Compare, or plan a move
Every figure for two cities or metro areas next to each other, and, if you are moving, what the difference in prices and rent comes to and the income that would keep pace.
Compare →Read a ranking, with its working
Each ranking publishes its pool, its inputs and what it leaves out, and can be downloaded as a CSV.
See the rankings →Latest AreaProfile Research
All research →Tax returns show who moves in and who moves out of each county, and in some large counties the two groups earn very differently.
Sep 2026 · Data as of IRS county migration, filing years 2022–2023Counted with the Place Finder’s own rules, some limits barely dent the map and some remove most of it. One, violent crime, cannot be applied to nearly a third of cities.
Sep 2026 · Data as of Current published figures: HUD Fair Market Rents FY2026, NOAA 1991–2020 normals, FEMA National Risk Index, FBI reported crime, 2018–19 school assessmentsThe Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes labor figures for cities of 25,000 or more. For smaller places, and for some larger ones the Bureau does not report separately, the only figure available is the county’s. Here is how often a profile shows one.
Sep 2026 · Data as of Latest BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics on file