Hattiesburg vs St. Cloud
Metro-area medians — Hattiesburg, MS Metro Area vs St. Cloud, MN Metro Area — not the cities proper.
St. Cloud comes out ahead, winning 6 of the 8 clearly-decided measures.
Hattiesburg and St. Cloud cost about the same to live in, but St. Cloud households earn about 22% more. Adjusted for local prices, a typical paycheck stretches further in St. Cloud.
For your salary & household
Enter your pay and household size to see what it's really worth here — the numbers update live and the link stays shareable.
On $75,000 for just you, Hattiesburg leaves you about $972/yr better off after tax and local prices.
Take-home estimates a single filer taking the standard deduction (2025 federal brackets, FICA, and state income tax) and isn't tax advice. “Real value” rebases take-home to average U.S. prices using the BEA cost-of-living index; the per-person figure uses the OECD square-root equivalence scale.
Choose St. Cloud for
- + Livability (CityLedger)
- + Cost-adjusted income (pay's real value)
- + Median household income
- + Median rent
- + Unemployment
- + Air quality (median AQI)
Hattiesburg vs St. Cloud — frequently asked
- Is Hattiesburg cheaper than St. Cloud?
- They are about even — the overall cost of living in the Hattiesburg and St. Cloud metros is within 3% of each other (BEA Regional Price Parities), so neither is meaningfully cheaper.
- Which has higher household income, Hattiesburg or St. Cloud?
- St. Cloud has the higher median household income — $75,688 versus $61,871 (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS), about 22% more.
- Does a paycheck go further in Hattiesburg or St. Cloud?
- A paycheck stretches further in St. Cloud. Adjusted for local prices, the median income is worth $86,370 there versus $70,602 in Hattiesburg.
- Which has cheaper rent, Hattiesburg or St. Cloud?
- St. Cloud has cheaper rent — a median of $1,039/mo versus $1,096/mo (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS).