What it costs to live in Utah
Price levels against the national average
Prices overall
-5%
below average
Housing
6.23%
ranks 16 for shelter
A hundred dollars of shopping
$95
costs this here
Price rank
27
1 is the most expensive
What that actually means in Utah
- Utah is cheaper than the country as a whole, ranking 27 nationally on price. Prices sit about 5% below average, so a hundred dollars of shopping costs $95. Small on any one purchase. Considerable across a year of them.
- Housing is the whole story in Utah. The state's prices overall are about 5% from average, and its housing is about 6.23% from it. Strip rent out and Utah looks like an ordinary American state. Leave it in and it does not.
- Put a wage against it. Seventy-five thousand dollars of salary, spent at Utah prices, stretches as far as $78,946 would at national-average prices. That is before any tax. It is purely what the local cost of things does to what you earn.
- Prices in Utah run about 5% below the national level, placing it 27 nationally. The one-hundred-dollar national-average basket costs $95 in-state. The parity is a fixed-basket price comparison, so the gap represents genuine purchasing power rather than a difference in what residents choose to buy.
- Decomposing Utah's price level separates a housing component about 6.23% above national from an all-items figure of about 5%, a divergence of about 11.23% and a shelter rank of 16. Because shelter is non-tradable, it absorbs local supply constraints that goods prices never register. A household's exposure therefore depends almost entirely on its housing tenure rather than on the state it lives in.
- A seventy-five thousand dollar salary deflated by Utah's price parity is equivalent to $78,946 of national-average purchasing power. ⚠️ No tax is included: this isolates the price level from the tax system entirely, and both act on the same income. Note also that the index says nothing about local nominal wages, so it should not be read on its own as evidence that a household is better or worse off here.
What the money buys here
A $75,000 salary
| Take-home, actual dollars | $58,255 |
|---|---|
| Price level, all itemsUS average = 100 | 95.002 |
| HousingUS average = 100 | 106.232 |
| Cheapest place to live | 25th of 51 |
Housing is where places differ most. Everything else moves far less than people expect.
Price parities are an index where the US average is 100 — a comparison between places, not a price.
The same pay, somewhere else
A $75,000 salary
| Take-home in Utah | $58,255 |
|---|---|
| Take-home in Texas | $61,593 |
| Once local prices are leveledBEA price parity | +$2,063 |
State income tax and state price levels only. No city income tax, and no housing market.
What is expensive here
A $75,000 salary
- Housing106.232
- Goods93.018
- Services94.365
| Housing | 106.232 |
|---|---|
| Goods | 93.018 |
| Services | 94.365 |
| All items | 95.002 |
An index where 100 is the national average. Housing moves far more than anything else.
Housing, against the country
A $75,000 salary
| Cheapest housing | MS · 55 |
|---|---|
| Dearest housing | DC · 169 |
| This state, cheapest first | 36th of 51 |
A BEA index where 100 is the national average, not a house price.
Where the ranking flips
A $75,000 salary
| Utah on take-home | 39th |
|---|---|
| Once prices are leveled | 27th |
| Places moved | 12 |
Left is rank on take-home. Right is rank once local prices are leveled by BEA parities.
Utah against Texas
A $75,000 salary
| Measure | Utah | Texas |
|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | $58,255 | $61,593 |
| Worth after local prices | $61,320 | $63,383 |
| Share of pay taxed | 22.33% | 17.88% |
| State sales tax | 6.1% | 6.25% |
| Groceries exempt here | No | Yes |
| Clothing exempt at $100 | No | No |
| Property tax rate | 0.52% | 1.49% |
| Price level | 95 | 97.2 |
| Housing prices | 106.2 | 97.4 |
| Fuel tax | 37.9¢ | 20¢ |
| Tobacco tax | $2.20 | $1.41 |
City income tax excluded. Sales-tax row: state-only. Exemptions: Utah, Statewide average; Texas, Harris County (Houston). Clothing: one $100 item; higher prices can change tax.
What you would need there
A $75,000 salary
| To match take-home only | $70,256 |
|---|---|
| You could take a cut of | −$2,850 |
| Prices in Texas | 97 vs 95 |
State taxes and state price levels only. No city tax, and no housing market.
Where the difference actually sits
Each line compares Utah with the national average for that kind of spending. The overall figure is the three above it, weighted the way a typical household spends — which is why housing can pull it a long way on its own.
| What you spend on | Against national average | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | 6.23% | Rent and owners’ equivalent rent |
| Goods | -6.98% | Groceries, fuel, clothing |
| Other services | -5.64% | Haircuts, repairs, childcare |
| All items | -5% | The three above, weighted |
What a salary is worth here
A salary of seventy-five thousand dollars, spent at Utah prices, buys what $78,946 would buy at national average prices. That is a price adjustment only. No tax of any kind has been taken off it, and tax is a separate bill on the same money.
What this page cannot tell you
- This is one number for the whole of Utah, and no state is one place. A big city and a rural county can sit far apart on every figure here.
- These prices were measured in 2023. Rents in particular can move a long way in a couple of years.
- And this is prices only. It says nothing about what Utah charges you in tax, which is a separate bill and is covered elsewhere on this site.
- These parities are state-level aggregates. BEA also publishes metropolitan-area parities, and within-state dispersion between a large metro and a rural area routinely exceeds the difference between two states — so a state figure should not be read as descriptive of any particular address in Utah.
- The underlying survey vintage is 2023, which is the most recent BEA publication rather than a current reading. Shelter parities are the component most exposed to drift between vintages, so recent local rent movements in Utah will not be reflected here.
- Price parity and tax burden are independent quantities and this page models only the first. A low-parity state with high income tax and a high-parity state with none can leave a household in the same real position; comparing Utah to another jurisdiction requires both figures, not either alone.
Questions people ask
What does a lower cost of living actually get me?
More from the same money. Prices in Utah sit below the national level, so every hundred dollars spent covers $95 of national-average goods. That is why a smaller salary here can leave you better off than a larger one somewhere expensive.
Is this number a percentage?
No — it is an index, with the national average fixed at one hundred. A state at one hundred and eight is eight index points above the average, not eight percent more expensive than any particular thing. Reading it as a percentage is the mistake that makes these figures sound more precise than they are.
Is it just housing that is different here?
Not only. In most states housing does nearly all the work, but Utah is less lopsided than that — goods and services sit closer to the housing figure, so the difference shows up across ordinary spending rather than concentrating in rent.
Does the overall figure tell me what housing costs here?
Here the two come apart: 27 of 51 overall against 16 for housing. Averaging them into one figure buries the difference.
How does a below-average price level translate into real income?
Utah's all-items parity is at or below the national average, so nominal income understates purchasing power: one hundred dollars purchases $95 of national-average consumption. ⚠️ Parity measures prices, not availability or quality, and does not capture differences in the composition of what is bought.
How should a regional price parity be interpreted?
Regional price parities are index numbers with the national average normalized to one hundred. Differences are expressed in index points and are comparative rather than proportional to any specific price. They are estimated from a fixed national consumption basket, so they do not reflect state-specific spending patterns.
How do this state's components decompose?
Utah's components are less dispersed than the national pattern, in which housing typically dominates. Goods and other-services parities sit nearer the housing parity, so the all-items figure reflects broad-based rather than shelter-concentrated divergence.
Why does this state's housing rank diverge from its all-items rank?
Utah ranks 27 of 51 on all items but 16 on the housing component. Because the all-items index weights housing at its national expenditure share rather than at the household's own, the headline figure understates housing divergence for renters and recent buyers, whose shelter share exceeds the national average.