A $100,000 Salary Shrinks to Roughly $36,000 in San Francisco, Study Finds
A SmartAsset analysis of 76 large U.S. cities concludes that a six-figure paycheck stretches far less in high-cost cities such as San Francisco, where taxes and living expenses cut its value sharply.
By Mei Ling ·
A six-figure salary has long been treated as a marker of financial success, but a new study suggests it carries very different weight depending on where a person lives. In San Francisco, the report finds, $100,000 a year is worth only about $36,445 once taxes and the cost of living are taken into account.
The analysis, produced by the fintech company SmartAsset, covered the 76 largest cities in the United States. It combined federal, state and local taxes with the local cost of living, which includes housing, utilities, groceries, transportation and other goods and services. The researchers drew on third-quarter 2022 data from the Council for Community and Economic Research and used SmartAsset's own paycheck calculator.
San Francisco came in third among the most expensive cities in the top 10. New York ranked first, with an equivalent take-home figure of $35,791 for a $100,000 salary, and Honolulu placed second.
Oakland landed in eighth place at $46,198. Several other California cities ranked as more expensive than Oakland, among them San Diego, Long Beach and Los Angeles, as did Washington, D.C. Boston was ninth and Seattle tenth.
At the other end of the list, Memphis, Tennessee, ranked first for affordability. A $100,000 salary there translates to $86,444 in adjusted take-home pay.
The report comes with some caveats. According to U.S. Census data, salaries in New York and San Francisco tend to run well above those in Memphis, which narrows the gap in practice. In Honolulu, average salaries are around $60,000, based on March data from ZipRecruiter.
Susannah Snider, a financial planner at SmartAsset, told Bloomberg the findings fit common sense. "I think it's intuitive: $100,000, a six-figure income—it feels like this big milestone, but it also feels very different depending on where you live," she said.
The Standard also put a related question to people around San Francisco: how much someone would need to earn to feel they had made it in the city, or to feel rich. Their answers were included in a video accompanying the original report.
Source: The San Francisco Standard
