Male Sex Work US Market Data

[Simon Suraci]

I’ve been using ChatGPT to analyze US markets. It’s fascinating! I came up with this graph by sourcing data from RentMen ads and the US census. I have my gut feelings on various markets, but some of these surprised me. Others did not.

Places like Salt Lake City, Dallas, and Boston are more relatively saturated than New York City and Los Angeles. Places like San Jose and Columbus have relatively low saturation which confirms my experiences in those places. Orange County is an outlier. Maybe certain cultural factors and cost of living are a heavier influence there.

This graph grossly oversimplifies the many factors that make a city relatively more or less saturated with male sex workers, but it’s an interesting read. My criteria limits cities to those having greater than 100,000 people. Some cities are not included because data was unavailable. The graph does not take into account metro areas, only cities, which may significantly change the results. That will have to be another study needing more input and refinement.

[Shawn Monroe]

THIS MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW AS SOMEONE WHO LIVES IN ATLANTA. 

it feels like it randomly exploded in the last 1-2 years and so many guys I’ve never seen before. 

there are also some surprises-I thought dallas, Houston and Chicago would be higher. 
 

time for me to move again. 

[NJF]

I wonder what is the saturation level in San Diego. It is a weird city in the sense that you mostly find travelers on RM.

[maninsoma]

One thing that occurs to me, simply based on the cities I'm familiar with:

Palm Springs has a much lower population than many other cities listed, but it has a high percentage of gay men, particularly gay men of a certain age who may have both the money and inclination to hire.  Maybe that's why the number of escorts there is so high relative to its population size.

Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly four decades, my understanding is that San Jose has a very minimal gay scene.  The gay men who want to live in a city are likely more drawn to San Francisco since there's more going on here; otherwise they can live in any number of the 'burbs between San Francisco and San Jose. 

I don't know Atlanta (have never been as an adult), but it was known as "Hotlanta" in Michigan when I was a young gay guy -- basically known as the most significant gay city between Michigan and southern Florida.  Maybe that explains why it has an outsized gay escort population?

[Nightowl]

Just curious: Does the data represent only sex workers who identified themselves as that specific city or does it include those in cities nearby?  In other words, did everyone in your “San Francisco” category identify as such or does it also include men in Sausalito, Berkeley, or Moraga?  

[moonlight]

That's interesting data! There's gotta be some confounding factors with Orange County, maybe because it's surrounded by other large markets (LA/WeHo, SD) with providers and clients traveling from one to the other.

[+ JamesB]

Please keep in mind that responses from ChatGPT, or any AI, for that matter, should be approached with a healthy degree of skepticism. While these tools can be incredibly helpful for general insights, summaries, or brainstorming, they are not infallible sources of truth. I've personally received answers ranging from somewhat misleading and outdated to completely incorrect, particularly when asking about topics that rely on specific data not readily available. As a quick test, I asked two other AI models for the same graph and got entirely different results from each.

 

 

[Simon Suraci]

50 minutes ago, Nightowl said:

Just curious: Does the data represent only sex workers who identified themselves as that specific city or does it include those in cities nearby?  In other words, did everyone in your “San Francisco” category identify as such or does it also include men in Sausalito, Berkeley, or Moraga?  

I didn’t get into this level of detail yet. I would like to, as I find metro areas to be more informative.

Each market is different. For example, Dallas-Ft Worth is a good pool to search in all directions since clients would see me in central Dallas all the way from Ft Worth (30 min drive), Denton, and more far flung suburbs to the south and east. In San Diego, however, the equivalent distance and 30 min drive time away from central San Diego would be a total non-starter for a lot of clients. Both would capture the general “metro area”, but what constitutes a reasonable catchment area varies widely from metro to metro.

I also didn’t get into sex workers living in a metro vs visiting a metro. Las Vegas, for example may have a higher percentage of transient sex workers vs Milwaukee. How we qualify those or quantify those gets hairy. That was just a guess to illustrate my point, btw. Don’t @ me.

16 minutes ago, JamesB said:

While these tools can be incredibly helpful for general insights, summaries, or brainstorming, they are not infallible sources of truth.

^💯 I never would trust an AI prompt result as such. It’s an interesting starting point to interrogate further.

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

3 hours ago, JamesB said:

Please keep in mind that responses from ChatGPT, or any AI, for that matter, should be approached with a healthy degree of skepticism. While these tools can be incredibly helpful for general insights, summaries, or brainstorming, they are not infallible sources of truth. I've personally received answers ranging from somewhat misleading and outdated to completely incorrect, particularly when asking about topics that rely on specific data not readily available. As a quick test, I asked two other AI models for the same graph and got entirely different results from each.

 

 

The 2nd graph is interesting, but must be taken with a grain of salt.  Las Vegas has 2 million people, but only 600,000 in the city limits (the Strip is not in the city limits), so it would be imperative to know if this chart references metropolitan area population or city population.  Further, Las Vegas has over 150,000 hotel rooms full of horny tourists, more than any other city, which isn't factored into the population number for sex workers per resident.

[Nightowl]

3 hours ago, Simon Suraci said:

I didn’t get into this level of detail yet. I would like to, as I find metro areas to be more informative.

Each market is different. For example, Dallas-Ft Worth is a good pool to search in all directions since clients would see me in central Dallas all the way from Ft Worth (30 min drive), Denton, and more far flung suburbs to the south and east. In San Diego, however, the equivalent distance and 30 min drive time away from central San Diego would be a total non-starter for a lot of clients. Both would capture the general “metro area”, but what constitutes a reasonable catchment area varies widely from metro to metro.

I also didn’t get into sex workers living in a metro vs visiting a metro. Las Vegas, for example may have a higher percentage of transient sex workers vs Milwaukee. How we qualify those or quantify those gets hairy. That was just a guess to illustrate my point, btw. Don’t @ me.

^💯 I never would trust an AI prompt result as such. It’s an interesting starting point to interrogate further.

I hope you’ll keep digging into this; it’s interesting.  You mention distance and drive time as non-starters for some clients.  That is definitely true.  Convenience is another issue.  A lot of potential clients might live close to the city where sex workers are concentrated but avoid going into the city because of traffic, insufficient public transportation, parking difficulty, etc.  In cities like DC, this is definitely an issue and even with one of the higher saturation rates per your analysis, it might as well be a wasteland for guys living as close as 15 miles.  If only the providers located in the city would “travel” to a local hotel outside of the city center for a few days every once in a while so that those of us on the outskirts could sample their wares, so to speak.  But I digress…

[+ nycman]

Boys, it looks like we’ve got another hooker with a graph fetish on our hands. 

But seriously, you needed ChatGPT to tell you West Hollywood is full of whores?

grin

On a serious note, the data is pretty interesting. Thank you for sharing. 

[+ sniper]

As someone who works with data for a living, the current state of AI is kinda useless for this stuff. Most data work is data cleanup, and AI lacks the insight for that. Can it distinguish between the RM provider profiles and those ads at the bottom of each page that look like profiles, for starters? Then there are the cross-city duplicates...

[+ FrankR]

18 minutes ago, nycman said:

Boys, it looks like we’ve got another hooker with a graph fetish on our hands. 

Oh @nycman I wish you wouldn’t use that word. You are probably not aware, but it is a derogatory term used to describe a group of people (Mennonites) where I grew up (Pennsylvania/Ohio). 🫣 In the future, let’s just call him what he is: a hard working man…emphasis on hard! 😉

[corndog]

I think this analysis is fundamentally flawed. Consider the top line: West Hollywood. The men who advertise there are usually serving the entire Los Angeles area. So, the saturation is calculated based on the number of advertisers compared to the population of West Hollywood (about 35,000) instead of Los Angeles (about 4 million) or the greater Los Angeles area (about 18 million).

My intuition tells me that New York City is just as saturated (or more) than Los Angeles, and yet this analysis paints the opposite picture.

[ShortCutie7]

On 5/18/2025 at 8:22 AM, corndog said:

I think this analysis is fundamentally flawed. Consider the top line: West Hollywood. The men who advertise there are usually serving the entire Los Angeles area. So, the saturation is calculated based on the number of advertisers compared to the population of West Hollywood (about 35,000) instead of Los Angeles (about 4 million) or the greater Los Angeles area (about 18 million).

My intuition tells me that New York City is just as saturated (or more) than Los Angeles, and yet this analysis paints the opposite picture.

Right, unless I’m reading the graph incorrectly, the implication is that over 15% of people in West Hollywood are male escorts… that is not possible.

[jeezifonly]

Data Shmayta 

Either there’s one who’s worth it within reach when you want it, or there ain’t. 

🍸

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

4 hours ago, ShortCutie7 said:

Right, unless I’m reading the graph incorrectly, the implication is that over 15% of people in West Hollywood are male escorts… that is not possible.

I've been to West Hollywood...15% being escorts does sound a little low 😆 

Edited May 25 by Vegas_Millennial

[+ Jamie21]

They’re model / actor / waiter / escort. That would cover 99% of West Hollywood? 

[MscleLovr]

3 hours ago, Vegas_Millennial said:

I've been to West Hollywood...15% being escorts does sound a little low

 

36 minutes ago, Jamie21 said:

They’re model / actor / waiter / escort. That would cover 99% of West Hollywood

Please be kind to these wannabes. They work hard to get ahead.

In my experience, they’re model/actor/musician/“You know I have feelings for you, right…but I’m struggling to pay my bills this month” 😎

[+ DrownedBoy]

I used ChatGPT as well, since I was playing with SA. Since I wasn't looking for actual sexual intercourse, I got estimates on what amateurs would accept.

Surprisingly, it was correct - half of what escorts on RM make, roughly. SA guys gobbled that up, although they still require good screening.

The price goes up with sex. Didn't need a computer analysis to tell me that.

[ICTJOCK]

Interesting information to analyze and review.   It does seem to make sense.     Would be intriguing to compare "notes"  and data from year to year and  see about changes.

[+ DrownedBoy]

On 5/17/2025 at 4:26 PM, Shawn Monroe said:

I thought dallas, Houston and Chicago would be higher

Chicago is getting higher - the past few months I've seen a lot of new ads on RM. And saw the first ad offering discounts. And rates aren't at LA/ NYC levels.

This market is the canary in the coal mine, as I think Simon here once said.

Edited May 26 by DrownedBoy
Spell

[MikeThomas]

Could someone do an analysis of my intuition that more and more providers are not including kissing in their "in tos"?