Iowa City, IA
Metropolitan statistical area, CBSA 26980 · 41.51, -91.65
3 findings fired for Iowa City, IA this run, against a typical home value of $300,040 in September 2026 and covered employment of 94,093 in 2026 Q1.
- 45th pct · 215th of 393 US metro areas · median 105,500
Total employment in the BLS OEWS occupational tables for this metro area. It is an occupational survey total, not the QCEW payroll count below.
An estimate: the sum of the member counties BLS publishes, not BLS's own metro row, whose boundaries follow each year's delineation. The arithmetic is printed below.
- 48th pct · 195th of 379 US metro areas · median $305,707
Zillow Home Value Index, metro file, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- 72nd pct · 106th of 382 US metro areas · median $1,504
Zillow Observed Rent Index, metro file.
- 20th pct · 300th of 379 US metro areas · median 16.9
typical home value / (typical rent × 12); Zillow ZHVI over ZORI, same month.
- 65th pct · 133rd of 379 US metro areas · median 2.0%
Zillow's own twelve-month change on the metro row.
A percentile here is a min-max scaling of average rank: the smallest published value in the cohort is 0 and the largest is 100, and tied values share the average of the ranks they span. It is not the share of entities below the value, so 0 means smallest, not none below. Entities that did not publish the metric are outside the cohort entirely and are counted in neither the rank nor its denominator.
Occupation mix #
The 30 largest detailed occupations and all 22 SOC major groups in Iowa City, IA, from the bundled BLS OEWS release.
| SOC | Occupation | Jobs | Mean annual wage | Location quotient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29-1141 | Registered Nurses | 4,090 | $85,670 | 2.00 |
| 35-3023 | Fast Food and Counter Workers | 2,890 | $29,850 | 1.24 |
| 41-2031 | Retail Salespersons | 2,710 | $32,660 | 1.15 |
| 53-3032 | Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers | 2,360 | $77,940 | 1.90 |
| 41-2011 | Cashiers | 2,090 | $31,080 | 1.12 |
| 35-3031 | Waiters and Waitresses | 1,890 | $27,750 | 1.38 |
| 31-1120 | Home Health and Personal Care Aides | 1,780 | $36,180 | 0.68 |
| 11-1021 | General and Operations Managers | 1,600 | $107,990 | 0.76 |
| 37-2011 | Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners | 1,540 | $38,410 | 1.16 |
| 53-7065 | Stockers and Order Fillers | 1,350 | $36,590 | 0.79 |
| 31-1131 | Nursing Assistants | 1,310 | $41,730 | 1.50 |
| 25-9045 | Teaching Assistants, Except Postsecondary | 1,290 | $30,790 | 1.51 |
| 43-6013 | Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants | 1,290 | $48,750 | 2.22 |
| 43-9061 | Office Clerks, General | 1,230 | $46,660 | 0.83 |
| 43-4051 | Customer Service Representatives | 1,190 | $46,540 | 0.76 |
| 35-2014 | Cooks, Restaurant | 1,060 | $35,780 | 1.25 |
| 13-1199 | Business Operations Specialists, All Other | 910 | $84,070 | 1.39 |
| 35-1012 | First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers | 850 | $42,180 | 1.15 |
| 53-7062 | Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand | 830 | $39,220 | 0.47 |
| 47-2061 | Construction Laborers | 800 | $52,070 | 1.21 |
| 13-2011 | Accountants and Auditors | 790 | $79,560 | 0.90 |
| 35-3011 | Bartenders | 790 | $26,570 | 1.73 |
| 43-9199 | Office and Administrative Support Workers, All Other | 790 | $48,750 | 6.84 |
| 25-2021 | Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education | 760 | $60,250 | 0.90 |
| 49-9071 | Maintenance and Repair Workers, General | 710 | $50,350 | 0.77 |
| 15-1252 | Software Developers | 690 | $113,220 | 0.68 |
| 11-9111 | Medical and Health Services Managers | 680 | $121,940 | 1.88 |
| 43-3031 | Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks | 660 | $51,420 | 0.80 |
| 43-6014 | Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive | 630 | $48,000 | 0.62 |
| 41-1011 | First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers | 610 | $52,150 | 0.90 |
| SOC | Occupation | Jobs | Mean annual wage | Location quotient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35-0000 | Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations | 10,060 | $31,590 | 1.22 |
| 43-0000 | Office and Administrative Support Occupations | 9,970 | $50,270 | 0.93 |
| 29-0000 | Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations | 9,890 | $96,160 | 1.67 |
| 25-0000 | Educational Instruction and Library Occupations | 8,820 | $99,790 | 1.61 |
| 41-0000 | Sales and Related Occupations | 7,320 | $44,070 | 0.90 |
| 53-0000 | Transportation and Material Moving Occupations | 6,740 | $54,310 | 0.82 |
| 11-0000 | Management Occupations | 5,620 | $115,070 | 0.84 |
| 13-0000 | Business and Financial Operations Occupations | 5,090 | $81,520 | 0.80 |
| 31-0000 | Healthcare Support Occupations | 4,630 | $41,060 | 0.97 |
| 51-0000 | Production Occupations | 3,900 | $49,100 | 0.75 |
| 47-0000 | Construction and Extraction Occupations | 3,040 | $58,910 | 0.79 |
| 37-0000 | Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations | 2,770 | $39,710 | 1.01 |
| 49-0000 | Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations | 2,700 | $59,230 | 0.74 |
| 15-0000 | Computer and Mathematical Occupations | 2,520 | $95,090 | 0.79 |
| 39-0000 | Personal Care and Service Occupations | 2,310 | $37,870 | 1.18 |
| 19-0000 | Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations | 2,210 | $73,080 | 2.49 |
| 21-0000 | Community and Social Service Occupations | 2,050 | $59,180 | 1.27 |
| 33-0000 | Protective Service Occupations | 1,300 | $60,480 | 0.57 |
| 27-0000 | Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations | 1,200 | $64,020 | 0.97 |
| 17-0000 | Architecture and Engineering Occupations | 920 | $88,980 | 0.59 |
| 23-0000 | Legal Occupations | 550 | $88,210 | 0.70 |
| 45-0000 | Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations | 130 | $41,840 | 0.50 |
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, metropolitan area tables, committed to this repository rather than fetched. A location quotient above 1 means the occupation is more concentrated here than in the United States as a whole; wages are means, not medians, and BLS suppresses a wage where its sample is too thin.
Housing #
The typical home in the Iowa City, IA metro was worth $300,040 in September 2026.
25 months to September 2026. Rent: $1,757 in September 2026.
Zillow Home Value Index and Observed Rent Index, metro files, joined by the RegionID recorded in the place manifest. Both are smoothed indices of the middle third of the market, not sale prices.
Employment, rolled up from member counties #
About 94,093 covered jobs across the 2 member counties BLS published.
- jobs = sum of QCEW third-month employment across the 2 of 2 member counties BLS publishes.
- 94,093 = 85,601 + 8,492
| County | FIPS |
|---|---|
| Johnson County, IA | 19103 |
| Washington County, IA | 19183 |
The place manifest names 2 member counties for this metro, fewer than the 5 a cohort needs before a percentile means anything, so no within-metro position is offered for its counties. The positions above are against the other 392 metropolitan areas, which is a cohort that does not depend on the county pull.
There are no QCEW metro employment totals here, and that is a property of the data rather than an omission: BLS does publish MSA area codes (C####), but lib/economy's QCEW reader handles only county (SSCCC), state (SS000) and national (US000) rows at aggregation levels 74, 54 and 14, and the /api/economy route regex rejects anything else. So this figure is a sum of member counties, labelled an estimate, with every county it could not count named.
National indicator context #
None of these series is keyed to this metro area. They are national, gauge, single-state or port series, shown as context for the numbers above.
| Indicator | Latest | Unit | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mississippi River at Memphis, stage | not published | ft | no data |
| Mississippi River at St. Louis, stage | not published | ft | no data |
| Ohio River at Louisville, stage | 17.95 | ft | ok |
| Missouri River at St. Joseph, stage | not published | ft | no data |
| Colorado River below Hoover Dam, flow (Hoover releases) | 5,170.00 | ft³/s | ok |
| Texas reservoirs, statewide percent full | 72.20 | % | ok |
| Laredo truck crossings, monthly | 258,700.00 | trucks | ok |
| Los Angeles + Long Beach container volume, annual | 10,513,167.00 | TEU | watch |
| Containerships waiting for a berth, all US ports | 7.00 | ships | ok |
| Shanghai to Los Angeles container rate | 7,848.00 | $ per 40 ft box | watch |
| US diesel retail price | not published | $ per gallon | no data |
| WTI crude oil, spot | 101.91 | $ per barrel | watch |
| 30-year fixed mortgage rate | 7.40 | % | watch |
| Housing starts, annual rate | 1,275.00 | thousands of units | ok |
| Building permits, annual rate | 1,403.00 | thousands of units | ok |
| Case-Shiller US home price index | 337.31 | index, Jan 2000 = 100 | ok |
| Unemployment rate | 4.20 | % | ok |
| US goods and services trade balance, monthly | -105,572.00 | $ millions | ok |
| Retail sales excluding food services, monthly | 652,115.00 | $ millions | ok |
lib/indicators has no geographic selection: every registry entry is a United States, gauge, Texas, port, crossing or world series, and no entry is metro-keyed. Reading these as this metro's own readings would be wrong.
What changed #
Iowa City, IA: 3 findings, 3 noted
noteThe next Unemployment rate (BLS Employment Situation, monthly) covering Iowa City, IA is due between 2026-10-30 and 2026-11-13, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern.
Show the arithmetic
- window = 2026-10-30 to 2026-11-13, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern
estimated from the publisher's past release pattern; not an announced date
noteThe next Zillow ZHVI typical home value (monthly) covering Iowa City, IA is due between 2026-11-14 and 2026-11-21, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern.
Show the arithmetic
- window = 2026-11-14 to 2026-11-21, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern
estimated from the publisher's past release pattern; not an announced date
noteThe next Zillow ZORI typical rent (monthly) covering Iowa City, IA is due between 2026-11-14 and 2026-11-21, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern.
Show the arithmetic
- window = 2026-11-14 to 2026-11-21, estimated from the publisher's past release pattern
estimated from the publisher's past release pattern; not an announced date
The full Iowa City, IA brief, with the arithmetic behind every sentence.
Metro briefs are thinner by construction: with no QCEW metro path, their findings come from Zillow's metro home value and rent rows, the county rollup, and nearby crossings and ports.