Atlanta is generally known as a low cost of living city. That trait is one of several things that make it and the region in general an attractive place to locate or expand businesses – see the numerous economic development stories from the past few years.
The latest news to confirm this comes from BusinessStudent.com, a reference site for students interested in a potential business career – MBA students and such. The site did an exhaustive review of American cities and tracked average salaries (of business careers) and how they vary by location. They also compared this to average rent prices in the city and Atlanta came out well.
There were 127 “business” careers included in their study. Medical Director was the highest paying job at $187,000 on average, Security Supervisor was the lowest at $31,000 per year and the average job tracked pays $75,000 per year. Likely no surprise, the highest paying business jobs are in Washington D.C., California, New York and Massachusetts (Georgia performs at a respectable 13th). The lowest are Montana, Idaho and North Dakota.
They looked at 215 different cities as part of the study; all five of the top cities are located in Silicon Valley (in fact the top 9 are all in California), with Palo Alto coming out on top.
Atlanta did not make the top 25 salary list, no Georgia city did. One of the 215 from Georgia did make the “Least” list however – Athens had the second lowest average salary of those analyzed.
However, for some places a problem arises when factoring in rent. San Francisco, Miami and Los Angeles all have high salaries for business careers but a good portion of income will go towards rent. The average “After Rent Annual Salary” in San Francisco is $47,000 – thus why rent is now skyrocketing in Oakland. Interestingly, the lowest after rent salary comes in College Station, Texas, where a combination of relatively low average salary of $55,000 combined with a $900 rent means only $44,000 after rent. Rounding out the low 5 are Miami, San Francisco, New York and Fort Lauderdale.
Despite the high average cost of rent – a whopping $3,928 for a 2 bedroom – Palo Alto still comes out on top in the after rent salary. With average salaries of $115,000, the after rent is still a very solid $68,000. San Jose comes in second and for the same reasons. Atlanta does very well in this statistic – 24th doesn’t seem like such a great number but out of 215 job markets it’s a very good showing. Average rent in Atlanta is a relatively high $1,800 but the average salary is nearly $81,000 so the after rent take-home is almost $59,000. No other Georgia city makes the high or low lists – although BusinessStudent.com may have had some methodology issues because presumably Athens should’ve made the list because its average salary was lower than the after rent take home of several included.
Atlanta’s position on the list is further good news for economic development in Georgia. As Atlanta goes, so goes the region and the ranking shows Atlanta is still very competitive for cost of living.
