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Even high-earning workers in San Francisco can barely afford housing.
- Cost of living is out of control in San Francisco and its surrounding suburbs compared to rest of the US.
- Using Insure.com's cost of living calculator, we found out how much a person would need to earn in San Francisco to maintain the same standard of living they have in other big cities.
- For example, a person earning $50,000 in Los Angeles would need to make roughly $68,000 to live a similar life in San Francisco.
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Cost of living variances across the United States are staggering.
In the country's most expensive big city, San Francisco, even workers in the highest-earning industries can barely afford housing.
To see how residents in other parts of the country would fare if they moved to San Francisco, we consulted Insure.com's cost of living calculator.
The tool analyzes costs of housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and goods and services, as well as car insurance and home insurance. The figures come from the Council for Community and Economic Research and Insure.com's own insurance costs data.
Below, we compared what people earning an annual after-tax income of $50,000, $100,000, and $150,000 in the biggest metro areas would need to earn in San Francisco to maintain their same standard of living.
The following metros are ranked by smallest cost of living disparity to largest. Note that Phoenix, Arizona, and Riverside, California, are not included due to lack of data.