Salaries in New York / Rent.

[januarysalesmania]

AIBU to ask how much people earn in NYC in order to be able to afford the ridiculous rents I keep seeing on NY rents Tik Tok?!

I know, I should be doing more useful things with my time. But that tik toc keeps coming up when I'm scrolling through FB and I'm fascinated. How do people pay $3000 a month?!

I lived there 10 years ago and was on about $100k but my boss paid my rent which was $3500 a month, as well as my healthcare. That’s how I afforded it! I was a nanny.

Salaries are significantly higher in many professions in NYC. In my industry almost double the salary for an equivalent role in London. Precisely because the cost of living is higher in NYC.

Like any big city, rent varies hugely by area. The high rents tend to be in Manhattan, and the decent parts of Manhattan at that. Many people who live there can walk to work, everything is so close by. People are paying for that premium. It’s very different once you get into the outer boroughs. It’s like comparing rents in Soho and Mayfair to zone 4 and 5.

My rent was much higher when I lived in NYC than London but super central and in my view totally worth it.

$3000 a month isn’t remotely expensive! We paid that to rent our 2 bed apartment in Chicago 4 years ago. I worked for a big company with quite transparent pay bands so I know that if I’d been doing my job out of NYC instead I would have been paid 20k more because the cost of living is so much more, and the worse thing is that I probably would have been worse off for it!

Is it not, really?? Wow. What would a nurse or a teacher earn in Chicago / New York?

Not sure, but I watched a documentary and then googled it afterwards and bin collectors in NYC earn over $80,000 a year if they've been employed for 5+ years

Salaries are higher than London in my profession too. My NY colleagues only get 2 weeks of holiday per year and 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave though so I have no interest in ever even exploring the possibility of going there.

I love those YouTube shorts and have wasted so many hours watching them 😖. The sizes of some of them are criminal and I say that as someone who has worked minimum wage jobs in London many years ago. I even lived in a room with no windows or skylight.

So I live in a big big US city. DH is a doctor and an epidemiologist and earns about 400K and I am an academic and earn about 150K? Our mortgage is about 6K a month. We have what in the UK would be called a flat but is basically the ground floor and lower ground floor of a detached house with a nice back garden. In an excellent school district. 4 bedrooms. About 3500 square feet of space.

Our place in NYC would be close to 10K in rent if not more.

For comparison at my level my UK colleagues are earning about 50K GBP in the humanities. I am at what is an R1 institution and I am now a full professor so my salary is on the higher side in the humanities.

A registered nurse in Chicago would make about $100,000. I don’t know any teachers.

It’s all relative isn’t it? Salaries are higher in the US in general and there will be many more high flying roles in NY. So while 3k sounds really dramatic you aren’t earning 24k and paying 3k in rent.

Dublin is actually more expensive as a city for renting.