New York City may be the most expensive place to live in America, but it is not the most costly place to employ people.
In both Boston and the San Francisco Bay area, the average worker receives more in wages and benefits than does the typical worker in the New York metropolitan area, according to figures released this week by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Boston and San Francisco are also the only big American cities where the cost of providing health care, year-end bonuses and other benefits is higher than it is in New York, the numbers show. That is true despite the high pay and rich benefits provided to those who work on Wall Street, said William Wiatrowski, an associate commissioner of the bureau, who presented the latest figures in New York on Friday. "There's a lot of interest in what employers are paying for benefits" because they account for one-fourth to one-third of the total cost of employing workers in big cities, Mr. Wiatrowski said.
In New York, the perennial national leader in cost-of-living surveys, the typical worker receives wages of $24.18 plus a package of benefits that is worth $11, for a total hourly cost of $35.18, the data show. For employees working 40-hour weeks, that amounts to an annual cost of a little more than $73,000.
In the Boston area, employee costs are almost 10 percent higher, with an average wage of $26.26 and benefits worth $12.36 per hour. Annualized, that would be more than $80,000, about $7,000 a year more than a New York worker costs.
The San Francisco area is nearly as expensive for employers, with average wages that are higher than Boston's at $27.10 an hour, but benefits costing less, $11.42 an hour. The annualized cost there would also be slightly more than $80,000.
The data indicate that employers seeking to cut their employment costs significantly would have to venture a long way from New York City. Benefit costs appear to divide somewhere near the Mason-Dixon line, as they exceed $10 an hour in most big Northern cities and are below that level almost exclusively in the South and the Southwest.
By far the cheapest of the cities for employers is Miami, where the typical worker earns just $17.61 an hour and receives benefits worth $6.39 an hour. That would amount to an annual cost of less than $50,000 per worker.
Most of the variations can be explained by the mix of occupations in each and the level of unionization, Mr. Wiatrowski said. Nationally, he said, the difference between what union members and nonunion workers in private business receive in wages and benefits is more than $10 an hour. Almost two-thirds of that gap is the value of the health insurance, vacation, pensions and other benefits the union members receive, he said.
"The big difference is health care," he said, adding that nearly half of union members pay nothing for their health insurance, while only about one of every eight nonunion workers in America receives fully paid health care as an employee benefit.
Does life really cost that much more here? I know people who spend hundreds of dollars a month on gasoline. My $89 MetroCard makes me more mobile than the drivers here most of the day.
Add together housing and transportation costs and compare to other cities, and New York might start looking pretty good.
I have lived in NYC for 35 years, and I have found the City quite livable as a hometown. You just have to know where to live and to know where to shop including shopping online. Plus, I don’t have a car. In fact, I don’t even know how to drive – The public transport is that cheap and convenient :) I will pay for high speed Internet access but not for cable TV access. And I don’t patronize high end restaurants and/or bars either.
This town is a tourist trap, and it is very easy to spend like a nut there :)
unionized employees? they are overpaid an underworked. Unions are thugs that keep the city’s coffers on the brink of bankruptcy and encourage laziness among their members. There are exceptions, but for the most part, this is what unionized labor – once a very good thing for working class Americans – has turned into.
“Does life really cost that much more here?”
Yes, it does. Read the statistics and visit some other regional American cities sometime.
I’ve done the MetroCard subway-to-work thing in New York, and I am infinitely happier with my shorter, quicker and more comfortable commute now — a five mile drive down the streets of El Paso, where the is no gridlock even during rush hour. Air conditioning, my choice of music, and a guaranteed comfortable seat. Plus I carpool, so the cost stays comfortably low.
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