Consulting Salary by City 2026: Level First, Office Second

One filed title, two dozen cities, one consulting salary floor

The fiscal 2026 disclosure file, checked 29 September 2026, holds 1,032,735 determination records for decisions made between 1 October 2025 and 30 June 2026. The record layout defines the wage field as the "Wage paid to nonimmigrant workers at the First Worksite Location", so the city and the wage sit in the same row.

Here is what the strategy firms did with that field.

One floor per title, repeated city after city. McKinsey states the same thing in its own words: its Associate posting gives a range of "$192,000 - $192,000 in USD", "including all office locations where the job may be performed". For these firms, the city question has a one word answer at the salary line, and the answer is no.

What the federal benchmark says those cities are worth

Each filing also carries a prevailing wage, which is the local market rate the Labor Department attaches to that job in that area. The wage rule makes the filed rate "the higher of the actual wage rate" and that prevailing wage, so the two numbers sit side by side in every row and the gap between them is readable.

For BCG's 229 certified Consultant filings at wage level II, the benchmark by city runs like this.

Brooklyn and Summit, New Jersey, carry the same $101,816 as New York, which is one metropolitan wage area in the Department's data.

Top to bottom, $130,187 minus $77,709 is $52,478, which makes the highest city 68 percent above the lowest. Bain's Consultant filings show the same shape at a different level: $106,517 in Austin to $149,552 in Boston, with the filed floor sitting at $192,000 in all twelve cities.

One caution on reading this table across firms. The benchmark depends on the survey source, the year and the wage level the filer selected, so two firms can carry different benchmarks for the same city. McKinsey's Associate filings, at level II, put New York at $76,232 inside a spread from $74,589 in Cleveland to $118,726 in Boston. Compare cities inside one firm's title, and not between firms.

Why the level dominates a consulting salary, in one subtraction

Put the two effects in the same units. At McKinsey, the filed floor for Business Analyst is $112,000 and for Associate it is $192,000, so one rung is worth $192,000 minus $112,000, which is $80,000. Moving the same Associate from Cleveland to Boston changes the filed floor by zero, because there is one floor.

That is the whole thesis of this page, and it holds for every strategy firm in the table above. A reader deciding between two offers at the same firm and the same level is deciding about something other than salary. A reader deciding between two levels is deciding about the largest number in the letter.

The practical version. Ask what level the offer is, and get the title exactly as the firm writes it, because the filings are organized by the filed title and nothing else. Consulting salaries by firm lists them level by level across sixteen firms, and McKinsey pay by level follows one firm from Business Analyst to Senior Partner. The office comes after that, and it is a question about clients, travel and cost of living rather than a question about pay.

The firms that do write a number per hire

Two large employers in the same file behave in the opposite way, and the counts make it obvious.

Accenture's Business Architecture Manager filings run from $139,320 in Cedar Park, Texas, to $223,142 in Mountain View, California, a spread of $83,822 around a median of $167,300. Deloitte filed 281 different Manager floors in nine months. Neither of those is a band with exceptions, and any single Deloitte Manager figure quoted to you has averaged something the firm does not treat as one thing.

So the answer to whether consulting pay varies by city depends on which half of the industry you are asking about. At a strategy firm, the city does not move the salary. At the large professional services firms, the city is one of several inputs and your own number is written for you.

The mechanism, measured rather than assumed

There is a measurable reason for the split, and it sits in the same two columns. Compare the filed wage with the benchmark attached to the same filing, on certified annual filings that carry one.

Deloitte files at the local benchmark in more than half of its filings, so its geography is the benchmark's geography. The strategy firms file 40 to 70 percent above it, which puts their number far enough above every local market rate that one national figure clears all of them. Read that as an observation about where the numbers land, since no firm publishes its reasoning.

Accenture sits in between, and it is the one firm that publishes its geography itself. Its Customer Growth Strategy Consultant posting, posted 15 September 2026, lists a range per jurisdiction: California $70,350 to $188,100, Washington $80,200 to $188,100, New York $66,300 to $188,100, and $59,100 to $188,100 in ten more. The ceiling is identical in all thirteen. Only the floor moves, by $80,200 minus $59,100, which is $21,100, and it moves only where a state transparency law applies.

What a fixed salary buys in different price levels

The second question was whether the same salary means the same thing. Federal statistics answer that, and they answer it by state rather than by city. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes regional price parities, and its February 2026 release covers 2024. The definition is theirs: parities "measure the differences in price levels across states for a given year and are expressed as a percentage of the overall national price level", and "housing rents are often the main driver in differences in RPPs".

For 2024 the highest were California at 110.7, Hawaii at 110.0, the District of Columbia at 109.9 and New Jersey at 108.8. The lowest were Arkansas at 86.9, Mississippi at 87.0, then Iowa and Oklahoma at 87.8. Housing rents alone spread from 154.3 in California to 54.2 in West Virginia.

Convert one filed salary with those. A $192,000 Associate base divided by 1.107 is $173,442 at California prices. The same $192,000 divided by 0.869 is $220,944 at Arkansas prices. The difference is about $47,500 on an identical contract, and 110.7 minus 86.9 is 23.8 points of price level doing the work.

That is the honest shape of the city question for a strategy hire. The firm holds the salary constant and lets the price level vary, so the office decides your real income while the letter shows the same number. None of this covers state income tax, which moves the comparison again and which we have not measured here.

What this page cannot tell you

Cities with no filings. A firm appears in a city here only if it sponsored someone there. Absence is a gap in the method rather than a statement about the office.

Anything outside salary. The filings carry no bonus, no signing bonus and no relocation. For national context, Tuck reports a $30,000 median signing bonus for its Class of 2025 consulting entrants, received by 90 percent of them, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. Whether any part of that varies by office is not published by anyone we read.

Non US offices. This record is a United States filing system. Nothing here describes London, Dubai or Singapore pay. No firm with a Dubai office publishes a Gulf range either, so that silence sits with the firms rather than with this filing system.

Cost of living inside a state. Price parities are state level for 2024, and rent inside one metropolitan area varies more than some state gaps do.

Two offers in two cities at the same firm and level come down to four comparisons, in this order.

1. Confirm the filed floor is identical. Find the firm and title in the table at the top. If the floor is one number across many cities, the salary line is settled and the three steps below carry the decision.
2. Divide each salary by the state price parity. The February 2026 release carries all fifty states, and the result is the offer in national price terms.
3. Price the commute and the client base. Ask which industries the office serves and where its teams travel on Monday, since that is what differs when the salary does not.
4. Check the level before the city. A promotion date is worth more than any office, by the $80,000 subtraction above.

Negotiating a consulting offer covers which parts of the letter move at all, and the 2026 filing record covers how often these numbers are refreshed.

Before any of that, there is an interview. Our structure drill scores a case structure against four weights we publish on the method page: Coverage 45, Separation 25, Depth 20, Concision 10. Those weights are our own work, since no firm publishes a rubric. The drill grades structure alone, it teaches no business content, and our assessment simulators are not running: the /assessments page says 0 of 6 simulators are live, in those words, today.