Hattiesburg vs Las Cruces
Metro-area medians — Hattiesburg, MS Metro Area vs Las Cruces, NM Metro Area — not the cities proper.
Hattiesburg comes out ahead, winning 6 of the 7 clearly-decided measures.
Hattiesburg and Las Cruces are closely matched on both cost of living and household income. Adjusted for local prices, a typical paycheck stretches further in Hattiesburg.
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 $1,486/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 Hattiesburg for
- + Livability (CityLedger)
- + Cost-adjusted income (pay's real value)
- + Median home value
- + Unemployment
- + Bachelor's degree or higher
- + Air quality (median AQI)
Hattiesburg vs Las Cruces — frequently asked
- Is Hattiesburg cheaper than Las Cruces?
- They are about even — the overall cost of living in the Hattiesburg and Las Cruces metros is within 3% of each other (BEA Regional Price Parities), so neither is meaningfully cheaper.
- Which has higher household income, Hattiesburg or Las Cruces?
- Household incomes are similar — $61,871 in the Hattiesburg metro versus $61,154 in Las Cruces (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS).
- Does a paycheck go further in Hattiesburg or Las Cruces?
- A paycheck stretches further in Hattiesburg. Adjusted for local prices, the median income is worth $70,602 there versus $67,789 in Las Cruces.
- Which has cheaper rent, Hattiesburg or Las Cruces?
- Las Cruces has cheaper rent — a median of $1,031/mo versus $1,096/mo (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS).