This article looks at the most expensive place to live in the US. To see the full free list, you can head over to the 26 Most Expensive Places To Live in the US.
American consumers are facing the burgeoning impact of rising prices like never before. The cost of living in the United States has increased significantly since the pandemic, with goods and services that cost $100 before the coronavirus now worth around $120, according to a report in Bloomberg in November 2023. Prices over the last 3-4 years in the country have risen nearly as much as in the decade before the pandemic.
A 2023 survey by the Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) revealed that more than two-thirds (67%) of the employees felt that inflation was rising at a quicker pace than their income, which reemphasized the stressful impact of the cost of living crisis on American citizens. The figure was up from 58% in Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC)’s last survey held in 2022. To tackle inflation and ensure the financial wellness of its employees, the company last year announced to raise its minimum wage from $22 to $23 and has plans to increase it further to $25 by 2025, which would ensure that all Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) employees make at least $48,000 per year.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) too has been actively making cost of living adjustments to wages of its employees amid increasing cost of living. Last September, it raised the hourly wage of its delivery and warehouse workers to $20.5 per hour from $19. The company has been striving to enhance the financial well-being of its employees for quite some time now, beginning first in 2018, when Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) declared a minimum wage of $15, which was then twice the amount of the federal minimum wage in the United States. While announcing the raise, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s executives also stated that they would engage policymakers nationwide to increase the minimum wage within their jurisdictions, at both the federal and state level.
Having said that, while some companies can increase wages, most others are not able to due to the financial challenges ahead of them. One example of that is Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), which after doubling the merit increases for certain employees in 2022, held back on raising the salaries of full-time employees in 2023 citing business priorities and corporate challenges. The freeze in raises has continued for well over a year now at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
Layoffs have also been on the rise in the Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) over the last couple of years, following growing pressure from investors after recording its slowest revenue growth (2%) in six years during the last quarter of 2022. Since then, the company’s stock price has increased 87% from $236.6 per share on January 3, 2023, to its current level of $442.47. Its diluted earnings per share (EPS) also marginally increased from $9.65 in 2022 to $9.65 in 2023. Workforce reductions and a freeze on merit increases have likely contributed to an improvement in the company’s financial performance.
On the other hand, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) last year decided to slash the salaries of its employees between 5-25% depending on their position, due to a lower forecasted sale and loss of market share. Wages of hourly workers remained unaffected. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s CEO Pat Gelsinger was among those whose salaries got cut.
Methodology
We have considered consensus methodology to rank the 26 most expensive places to live in the US by averaging city cost of living index scores on two sources: Numbeo and Best Places. The most expensive places to live in the US are ranked in ascending order of their average cost of living index scores, with New York City set as the benchmark to compare against. We have also referred to other sources such as Expatistan, RentCafe, and Payscale for various statistics related to the cost of living for each city, which you will be reading in the lists section.
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The most expensive place to live in the US is San Francisco!
1. San Francisco, California
Average Cost of Living Index: 118
San Francisco is the most expensive place to live in the US, with the median house prices hovering around $1.3 million within the city. According to Payscale, the overall cost of living in the city is 79% more than the national average, with housing being a staggering 207% more expensive. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to see people moving out of the city or looking for accommodation in San Francisco’s outskirts due to the high cost of living.
To learn about other places with a high cost of living, check out our detailed report 26 Most Expensive Places To Live in the US.
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