The national median is context. The metro is the offer.
San Jose nurses, Little Rock aides, and Boston LPNs cannot share one national number as the offer.
The national median is the comparison line. The metro median is the offer. Mixing those two jobs is how a careful committee posts the wrong wage with a clean conscience.
A national figure answers a real question: how does this city compare with the country? It does not answer the question candidates ask, which is how the offer compares with pay where they already work. Use the national number in the briefing. Take it out of the range before the range is allowed to publish.
Three occupations from this month's pages show the mistake running in different directions. None of them is a reason to throw the national figure away. Each is a reason to stop hiring with it.
San Jose registered nurses
The national median for a registered nurse is $97,550. San Jose's median is $216,740, and the local lower quarter is already $165,050. A range built from the national figure, even one nudged until someone calls it six figures, sits under wages ordinary local nurses already earn. The national number is useful here because the distance is so large. About $119K separates the two medians. That distance belongs in the note that explains why the template cannot ship. It does not belong in the offer letter.
Little Rock home health aides
The national median for a home health aide is $35,800. Little Rock's median is $27,840, and the local upper quarter is $29,320. Here the national figure is the trap in the other direction. Paste it into the ad and you look generous against a market whose entire middle sits under $29,320. You also look like you have not opened the local row. Candidates doing this work for local agencies know the band is tight and low. A national range does not recruit them. It tells them the posting was written for a different city.
The right use of $35,800 is the sentence "we pay less than the country, and here is the local number we will actually offer." Hide that sentence and the req goes quiet for a reason your job board cannot fix.
Boston licensed practical nurses
The national median for a licensed practical nurse is $64,400. Boston's median is $82,190, and the lower quarter is $75,050. Clearing $64,400 is not the test. A draft can beat the country and still lose to the local lower quarter. The national figure earns its place by showing the committee that Boston is not a cheap market. After that, $75,050 and $82,190 have to take over.
One spreadsheet, three offers
The operational failure is a single wage column reused across reqs because it feels consistent. Consistency across occupations and cities is how San Jose, Little Rock, and Boston inherit one another's mistakes. Give each req two numbers on the intake, labeled. National median, for context. Local median, for the offer. If you know the local lower and upper quarters, add them and circle the one you are paying. A range that cannot survive the circled number does not go up.
Do not average a high metro with a low one to calm the spreadsheet. The average is a third place, and nobody works there.
Illustrative story
Comp had one workbook open for three reqs: a registered nurse in San Jose, a home health aide in Little Rock, and a licensed practical nurse in Boston. The national column was filled in. The local column was empty, because the national column had always been enough to get an approval.
The San Jose range never reached $165,050. The Little Rock range hovered near $35,800, above any ordinary local aide wage. The Boston range cleared $64,400 and still sat under $75,050. All three were faithful to the same column. All three were the wrong offer.
They added the local median as a required cell and refused to approve a range that could not sit next to it. The national figure stayed, in a column literally labeled context. Three different offers came out of one meeting. That was the point of having three rows.
When you brief a req, say the national median and then say you are done using it. The metro is what you post.
https://reqradius.com/hiring/methodology/
Sources
The same read for your own opening is a Hiring Pack. One is $24.00. The sample Hiring Pack shows the pages.