Living in the City by the Bay sure doesn’t come cheap but San Francisco’s super-sized salaries may well make up for its stratospheric real estate costs.
Indeed, San Francisco now has the highest salaries in the world, with residents hauling in an average of $6,526 a month, according to Deutsche Bank’s new report “Mapping the World’s Prices 2019.”
Buoyed by the booming tech sector, the city also has the highest disposable income in the world of $4,710 a month, after rent. That buys a whole lot of avocado toast and orange wine, no? That figure is up 31 percent year-over-year and 88 percent in a five-year span, as Curbed SF notes, even as the city faces a gaping chasm between the rich and the poor and a massive homeless population.
Baghdad-by-the-bay dislodges Zurich for the top spot, although the Swiss city tops the survey for quality of life. And it’s hard to beat the cheese.
“The rapid growth of the U.S. tech sector is helping San Fran beat traditional capital cities for incomes,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid, Craig Nicol and Henry Allen wrote in the report. “Whilst its cost of living is increasing each year and rising up the cost rankings on most measures we cover, it still lags major global capitals. In terms of 2-bed rents however, it is only behind Hong Kong.”
The report adds that San Francisco has the second-highest median rent in the world, just behind Hong Kong at $3,631 per month.
As for other big American cities, the Big Apple comes in third in this global ranking of salaries ($4,612), with Boston ($4,288) and Chicago ($4,062) following closely behind. Cities making the list for the first time include Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Cairo, Rome, Lagos, Riyadh and Seoul.
