You probably guessed it from the $14 cocktails and $3,000-a-month rents for a studio apartment: Manhattan is pricey.
But there’s more hard data to prove that it’s by far the most expensive place to live in the United States.
How expensive?
Manhattan rates a Cost of Living Index of 233.5, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research.
That’s based on a national index average of 100 — so Manhattan is well over twice as pricey as the average.
The council evaluated 300 US cities to determine their index numbers based on the cost of 60 consumer goods and services — from grocery items and housing to health care and transportation. (For the purposes of this survey, New York City’s boroughs are treated as distinct cities.)
A distant second on the list was Brooklyn, with an index of 183.4. Queens was sixth, with an index of 151.4.
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2 Responses
What they don’t say in the article is that incomes are also much higher here than in other cities. We pay first year law school grads about $165,000 year here in Manhattan because of the high cost of living versus 145,000 in Chicago office and less than $130,000 year in Atlanta
Yes pick one job with a major financial difference . How about the average person’s salary through out the country which is around 20,000 or a social worker with a LMSW which will only make about 5000 more in NY.
If your food and rent is almost triple, is that 5000 going to make all the difference????