Phoenix: a fast-growing Sun Belt Big Mac near the US median
Phoenix has been one of the fastest-growing US metros over the past decade, and the Big Mac price reflects that — running near the US median but rising faster than most peer cities since 2021. Arizona's minimum wage indexes to inflation, and Phoenix-area commercial rent has accelerated alongside the population influx from California and the Northeast.
The Phoenix Big Mac is most useful as a Sun Belt-migration tracker. As remote workers and retirees relocated from higher-cost coastal markets, Phoenix restaurant prices moved up faster than Arizona's traditional wage base would predict. The gap between Phoenix and Tucson — Arizona's second city — is wider than most state-internal pairs in the dataset, capturing the inflow effect cleanly. When that gap compresses, the migration wave is cooling.