18th of 19: the Midwest metros that employ 5,000 or more home care aides, ranked by wage

This is the labor pool St. Louis actually hires from. Against it, the metro is next to last.

By the rate desk. Pulled September 10, 2026.

Nationally St. Louis is mid-pack. Regionally it is not. Take the twelve states the Census Bureau calls the Midwest, keep every metro in them where the survey counts 5,000 or more aides, and rank the 19 that remain by median hourly wage. St. Louis is 18th at $14.28. Wichita, at $13.89, is the only one lower.

Chicago leads at $17.47 and Minneapolis-St. Paul follows at $17.38. The whole spread of the 19 is $3.58, and the middle of the pack sits at $15.38. The bottom four places belong to Kansas City at $14.39, Springfield at $14.38, St. Louis, and Wichita. Three Missouri metros and one in Kansas.

The threshold matters, so it is stated before the wages are. Five thousand aides is the cut between a metro with a real home care labor market and one where a couple of large employers set the number. It is a rule about employment, chosen before any wage was read, and it removes 74 smaller Midwest metros from the ranking. Their figures are summarised below the table so nothing is hidden.

Methodology

Universe: every metropolitan statistical area in the May 2024 metropolitan file whose primary-state field, PRIM_STATE, is one of the twelve states in the Census Bureau's Midwest region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin), and whose employment for occupation 31-1120 is 5,000 or more. Both rules were fixed before any wage was read. 93 Midwest metros publish a median for this occupation; 19 clear the employment threshold. Bi-state metros are counted whole, on the side the survey files them: Chicago is Illinois, Cincinnati is Ohio, Omaha is Nebraska.

Metric: median hourly wage, H_MEDIAN, for occupation 31-1120, home health and personal care aides. Ranked highest to lowest. Median annual wage and employment are printed from the same row and are not ranked.

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024 estimates, metropolitan file oesm24ma.zip, sheet MSA_M2024_dl.xlsx. Pulled September 10, 2026. Federal data, public domain.

Midwest metros with 5,000 or more aides, by median hourly wage, occupation 31-1120
#	Metro area	Median	Annual	Aides
1	Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN Illinois	$17.47	$36,340	94,530
2	Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Minnesota	$17.38	$36,150	86,260
3	Duluth, MN-WI Minnesota	$17.31	$36,000	5,300
4	Madison, WI Wisconsin	$17.29	$35,970	8,170
5	Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA Iowa	$17.06	$35,480	5,620
6	Omaha, NE-IA Nebraska	$16.81	$34,960	6,020
7	Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI Michigan	$16.51	$34,340	7,420
8	Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI Wisconsin	$15.83	$32,930	29,420
9	Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Michigan	$15.53	$32,290	38,410
10	Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Ohio	$15.38	$31,990	14,810
11	Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek, OH Ohio	$15.29	$31,790	5,930
12	Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN Indiana	$15.14	$31,490	21,760
13	Columbus, OH Ohio	$15.00	$31,210	25,540
14	Akron, OH Ohio	$14.91	$31,020	5,570
15	Cleveland, OH Ohio	$14.91	$31,020	18,310
16	Kansas City, MO-KS Missouri	$14.39	$29,930	20,210
17	Springfield, MO Missouri	$14.38	$29,900	6,230
18	St. Louis, MO-IL Missouri	$14.28	$29,700	42,390
19	Wichita, KS Kansas	$13.89	$28,900	5,350

The 19 metros together employ 447,250 aides. Metro names are the survey's own area titles; the state shown is the survey's primary state. St. Louis is set in the second colour.

The 74 smaller Midwest metros, for scale

Drop the threshold and rank all 93 Midwest metros with a published median. St. Louis is 84th of 93: 83 pay more, 9 pay less. The highest and lowest medians in the region both belong to metros with under a thousand aides, which is the reason the threshold exists.

Dubuque, IA, highest of the 93, 960 aides	$19.82
St. Louis, 84th of the 93, 42,390 aides	$14.28
Lawrence, KS, lowest of the 93, 560 aides	$12.50

Same file, same occupation, same pull date. Not ranked on this page because the small metros are what the threshold was built to set aside.

What this ranking does not say

It does not survive every threshold unchanged. Raise the cut to 10,000 aides and 10 metros remain, with St. Louis last of the 10 and Kansas City just above it. Lower it to zero and St. Louis is 84th of 93. The position moves, the story does not: on this wage St. Louis is near the bottom of its region at every cut this desk tried.

It does not adjust for what a dollar buys in each metro, and it does not say why Chicago pays $3.19 more an hour than St. Louis. The survey records wages. It does not record minimum wage law, union contracts or the mix of employers, all of which differ across these twelve states.

It does not put a price on an hour of care anywhere in the region. This desk publishes no agency rate, because none exists in a public dataset and the commercial survey that collects them does not permit its tables to be reprinted, and it will not manufacture one from a wage.