Are You in the Best City for Your Job?
A high salary goes only so far if the cost of living is even higher. If you defectiveness your dollar to travel further, perhaps it’s time to relocate
by Prashant Gopal
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Elizabeth A. Campbell was blest through the job offer from a top Houston law firm, boundary she wasn’t itching to leave the comfortable vitality she had built for herself and her two teenage boys in suburban New Jersey. Other than a detour to Michigan for law school, she was a lifelong Northeasterner.
Campbell drew up a table of the pluses and minuses of relocating. On the plus side: more affordable real estate, no situation taxes, cheaper food and services, an international airport, and strong schools and sports programs. Only one less: saying goodbye to friends and family.
It has been almost a year since Campbell joined Houston’s Andrews Kurth law firm as a partner and chief diversity officer, and the angst is long gone. She sold her 2,800-sq.-ft. residence in Bordentown, N.J., for $350,000 and upgraded to a 4,200-sq.-ft. place forward a golf course with five bedrooms and a bit of strategy room six miles exterior Houston. The excellence: less than $325,000.
Houston Is Rolling in Oil"The bottom line was: ‘How come I didn’t live in this place already?’" Campbell said. "I came here because of a job. But it’s a wonderful city, and I esteem power to see myself retiring here."
Only a few years ago, Houston was reeling. The implosion of Enron in 2001 had sandbagged the local economy, and the mood was terrific. But that seems like a long time ago now. The burst in energy costs has boosted the city’s oil- and natural gas-fed economy, which is to one’s home to ExxonMobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), as well as Waste Management (WMI), KBR (KBR), and many greater degree. Job seekers in all sorts of careers have started streaming into Houston, where the unemployment rate was 3.8% in April, the lowest flush in eight years, and where the job expansion rate was 2.8%.
Businessweek.com worked through Seattle’s Payscale.com to determine where the best and foil cities are as antidote to 20 common careers and found that—then it comes to earning a comfortable keeping—Houston it at or adjacent the top during the term of most jobs, from human resources manager to graphic designer. We adjusted the middle compensation for jobs in each of the top 25 big-city metros for cost of living. Houston, Dallas, and Charlotte, N.C., rose to the rise above for many of the jobs for the cause that they’re affordable cities with competitive salaries. New York, San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles, and Boston, which have some of the highest salaries, sank to the bottom because residents there pay through the nose for actual estate, parking, groceries, and almost everything else.
Accepting a reduce salary might make monetary sense if you were willing to withdrawal an expensive city such as Seattle and settle in, say, Oklahoma City. But it’s also important to subsist assured of whenever a hire looks higher than it as a matter of fact is.
When Is a Raise Not a Raise?"What looks like a 20% raise might turn used up to be a pay cut if you’re moving from a less expensive place like Pittsburgh to San Francisco," said Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at Payscale.com, which provides real-time salary advice to individuals and employers.
For copy, the median income for the executive director of a nonprofit in New York is $87,800, more wealth than you could expect in a single one other of the nation’s 25 largest cities. But on our list, New York is actually the worst grade for the job because—adjusted for cost of benefice—the salary would be tantamount to just $41,400 in a city such as Detroit where lifestyle costs equal the national average.
Of course, there’s more to a job than compensation (the number of available jobs, opportunities for advancement, etc.), but that our list focuses on relative compensation.
