I’m in one of those dark red areas and I’ve never seen anything costing 20k a month unless its a huge swanky house on giant piece of land. One like this, in the rich part of Palo Alto. Most I’ve seen are around 5-10k for a 5-bed, even in Atherton. Rent for a single-bed apartment is between 2-5k depending on the lavishness.
Pay range generally has followed housing cost within the region. Meaning an engineer may be able to make >200k in one of the higher cost areas, but then make 80k in one of the lower cost, all while doing the same work. The problem is more that house prices almost everywhere cost beyond what most people can afford. Moving to a completely different region also may work for some people that have more universal jobs or are WFH, but a lot of people in those expensive regions have specialized experience/education that are hard to find jobs for outside. So, an electronics engineer with a specialty in EVs and battery cell physics wouldn’t be of much use in Nebraska.
Let’s do some hypothetical scenarios. If you’re making $80k a year, your take home pay is roughly $5k a month. Spending $2k a month on rent leaves you with $3k for everything else. If you make $200k+, your take home pay is closer to $10k a month or more. If your rent is $4k a month, that leaves you with $6k for everything else that pretty much costs the same as the area where you’re only making $80k. Even at $6k/month for rent, you still have more money. Automatically, it’s better to take the higher paying job with the higher rent.
It’s a bit more to than just that.
I’m in one of those dark red areas and I’ve never seen anything costing 20k a month unless its a huge swanky house on giant piece of land. One like this, in the rich part of Palo Alto. Most I’ve seen are around 5-10k for a 5-bed, even in Atherton. Rent for a single-bed apartment is between 2-5k depending on the lavishness.
Pay range generally has followed housing cost within the region. Meaning an engineer may be able to make >200k in one of the higher cost areas, but then make 80k in one of the lower cost, all while doing the same work. The problem is more that house prices almost everywhere cost beyond what most people can afford. Moving to a completely different region also may work for some people that have more universal jobs or are WFH, but a lot of people in those expensive regions have specialized experience/education that are hard to find jobs for outside. So, an electronics engineer with a specialty in EVs and battery cell physics wouldn’t be of much use in Nebraska.
Let’s do some hypothetical scenarios. If you’re making $80k a year, your take home pay is roughly $5k a month. Spending $2k a month on rent leaves you with $3k for everything else. If you make $200k+, your take home pay is closer to $10k a month or more. If your rent is $4k a month, that leaves you with $6k for everything else that pretty much costs the same as the area where you’re only making $80k. Even at $6k/month for rent, you still have more money. Automatically, it’s better to take the higher paying job with the higher rent.