Manhattan Best Paying County in America!

Congrats Manhattanites for earning $2025 as your average salary!!!!

Wow, not a bad chunk of change. No wonder apts are like 3 grand a month!

Unfortunately, Kings County has some catching up to do with its workers brining in about $660 per week.

Lowest average weekly pay is in Cameron County Texas ($460 per week).

While I work in Manhattan, but live in Brooklyn...I'm going to stand up and take a bow for anchoring everyone near the bottom. Maybe with a few more years of seniority though, I could hit the Brooklyn weekly average.

All according to the New York Post

http://www.nypost.com/business/58589.htm

I read once someone who makes $100,000 a year in Manhattan has the same purchasing power as someone who makes $38,000 a year in parts of North Carolina.
It's a concrete jungle :eek:

Hahaha! I find those sorts of economic analyses fascinating! :D

New York also has the highest precentage of people paying 50% or more of total income to housing costs. (Woo hoo! That's me too. I am in the economic category called "Severely rent burdened")

I think its 29 or 30 percent. It may have gone up though.

Beware of statistics... if it says $2025 is the average weekly salary, don't be fooled into thinking this is what most people make... I would imagine that Manhattan, with all its captains of industry and stuff, has a concentration of really, REALLY high-paying people, bringing this average figure way up, kind of skewing things and making it appear as though this is what the average Joe makes. I mean, everyone could be making $700 a week (this is an example -- I know that's not a good salary for Manhattan) and one person could be making $1,000,000 a week, and this totally changes the average.

Okay, that's probably really obvious to most people, but I've known many people to misinterpret that kind of thing.

I read once someone who makes $100,000 a year in Manhattan has the same purchasing power as someone who makes $38,000 a year in parts of North Carolina.
It's a concrete jungle :eek:

I believe it. A friend of mine makes $110,000 a year....but he is recently out of med school and still has loans...so he has to stay in Texas b/c the cost of living for him is so much cheaper there than where his family lives in Bergen County, NJ which I think was the 4th most expensive place to live in 05.

Another trend I see is people taking these jobs that pay that average, but living further and further south. For a while a majority of the Manhattan commuters were from Brooklyn, West Chester, Queens, Bergen and Hudson COunty, NJ etc.

But now people are living near Trenton, NJ and Tom's River, NJ and sometimes even further south than that and making these ridiculous commutes and at all kinds of hours to bring home that pay check and get more house for the money. But I am starting to think--at what other price?? If you are leaving your house at 5:30 am and getting home around 7:30 pm and passing out by 9...what time do people even have left for family?? They don't wanna give up the big pay check, but if they live closer to that job the housing will cost more and they would have to have a smaller home. People wanna have their cake and eat it too. They wanna have the mini mansion, but I think in certain cases they sacrifice a lot. I definately see commute time in a factor for me when searching for a job.

Another trend I see is people taking these jobs that pay that average, but living further and further south. For a while a majority of the Manhattan commuters were from Brooklyn, West Chester, Queens, Bergen and Hudson COunty, NJ etc.

But now people are living near Trenton, NJ and Tom's River, NJ and sometimes even further south than that and making these ridiculous commutes and at all kinds of hours to bring home that pay check and get more house for the money. But I am starting to think--at what other price?? If you are leaving your house at 5:30 am and getting home around 7:30 pm and passing out by 9...what time do people even have left for family??....

Well, IYE...

A 2-hr commute is a bunch of BS in my opinion! A lot of folks in CA do that too, except it's freeway driving. That's just not intelligent time management.

Either the job needs to change, or the house does.

Well, IYE...

A 2-hr commute is a bunch of BS in my opinion! A lot of folks in CA do that too, except it's freeway driving. That's just not intelligent time management.

Either the job needs to change, or the house does.
Yep. I agree. That would totally stress me out.

It's always been like that IYE, you just didn't see it. One of my uncles, who lives in Great Neck, used to say that "there was no gain if you spent time with your family". It's the motto of materialism. If you want to have the house and the car and whatnot to impress everybody, then there's a price to pay for it - usually at the expense of your wife and children.

My cousin Grecco can remember one summer where my uncle got home from work one time before eight p.m. They had the huge house, the summer house in the Hamptons, yadda yadda, but what the boys really wanted was some time with their dad but he was at the office.

Interestingly, my cousin Tony was almost exactly like that and then 9/11 happened. That totally changed his outlook. He now lives in PA, in a much smaller house, with a much smaller investment job at a much smaller salary and he's much happier - and he gets to see his children more often.