Zurich is home to the highest wage earners



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London is the most expensive city in the world
while Zurich is home to highest wage earners
A report by UBS

THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITIES IN THE WORLD
ECA International survey (June 2008): Introduction | Table: World | Table: Europe | Table: Asia |
UBS survey (March 2008): Most expensive cities (Intro) | World's most expensive cities (table) | Richest cities by personal earnings (table) | Richest cities by purchasing power (table |
Mercer survey (2007): Most expensive cities
EIU survey (2007): Most expensive cities

RICHEST CITIES BY GDP
Introduction | 150 richest cities in 2005 | 150 richest cities in 2020 | Europe's richest cities |


The world's richest cities by personal net earnings in 2008
Rank
Cities
Index
New York =100
1 Zurich 140.3
2 Dublin 132.3
3 Oslo 131.7
4 Geneva 130.4
5 Luxembourg 120.0
6 Copenhagen 114.1
7 London 110.0
8 Helsinki 108.7
9 Frankfurt 102.4
10 Munich 101.4
11 New York 100.0
12 Berlin 98.3
13 Vienna 97.9
14 Los Angeles 96.7
15 Sydney 95.8
16 Chicago 94.1
17 Brussels 93.3
18 Stockholm 92.2
19 Toronto 91.6
20 Tokyo 89.3
21 Montreal 87.7
22 Auckland 87.5
23 Amsterdam 87.3
24 Lyon 83.3
25 Nicosia 83.3
26 Paris 81.4
27 Barcelona 81.4
28 Madrid 78.6
29 Miami 74.4
30 Milan 71.0
31 Dubai 64.2
32 Athens 59.3
33 Rome 59.0
34 Seoul 50.6
35 Lisbon 46.1
36 Singapore 45.0
37 Taipei 43.4
38 Manama 38.1
39 Ljubljana 36.4
40 Sao Paulo 35.9
41 Johannesburg 35.4
42 Hong Kong 35.4
43 Prague 34.7
44 Moscow 31.6
45 Istanbul 31.3
46 Tallinn 29.3
47 Bratislava 26.6
48 Santiago de Chile 26.4
49 Rio de Janeiro 26.1
50 Budapest 25.6
51 Warsaw 24.8
52 Caracas 22.6
53 Vilnius 21.0
54 Riga 21.0
55 Buenos Aires 19.6
56 Lima 18.2
57 Kuala Lumpur 17.8
58 Bucharest 15.9
59 Bogota 15.7
60 Shanghai 15.5
61 Mexico City 14.0
62 Sofia 13.4
63 Kiev 13.1
64 Nairobi 13.0
65 Beijing 12.9
66 Bangkok 12.8
67 Mumbai 10.8
68 Manila 9.8
69 Delhi 9.7
70 Jakarta 8.3

Methodology
These calculations are based on wage figures, social security contributions and working hours in 2006 for fourteen widespread professions. Uniform criteria were used with regard to work experience, age, marital status etc. The wage index was weighted by the share of each occupation in overall employment and overall income and also by gender. The figures relate to pay net of taxes and social security contributions. In calculating the 2008 update of the wage index, USB not only took account of exchange rates and inflation, but also factored in that part of the economic growth was due to productivity improvements and was therefore passed on to employees in the form of higher pay.

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Comment
Most expensive
dollar-cities
Author: John Courtney Watt Submitted: 18 December 2007
Dear Editor: In compiling your list of most expensive cities worldwide, why do you insist on standardizing all costs relative to the American Dollar? This means that the cost of those cities only pertains to a person spending or earning American dollars. It does not address the costs relative to what a person typically earns in that city. Wouldn’t it be far more meaningful and informative if you took the median income earned in that particular city and compared it to costs incurred in that city such as food, transportation and housing (which itself should be the median price). For example, prices may be cheap in American dollars in Lagos, Nigeria thus giving it a low ranking in terms of costs. But what if a person living in Lagos is earning an income similar to the median income for that city and the prices for food transportation and the median house price/rent is high relative to that person’s wages then Lagos should score a higher rank in the table of expensive cities. Even within the same country wages are not the same for identical occupations in different cities. A corporate lawyer in New York will earn more than a corporate lawyer in Mobile, Alabama but how do their wages compare to costs within their respective cities? This is how cost of living in cities should be ranked, not to the baseline of the American dollar.

Editor's reply:
We agree with the above comment. Indeed in our introduction we said: “The problem with all three surveys is that they convert local prices into US dollars, which means that any changes are as much the result of currency fluctuations as of price inflation. For example according to all three surveys, the cost of living in European cities becomes more expensive if the dollar weakens even when local prices remain unchanged.” More