Stretching your salary
Workers get big bang for their salary buck in Dallas and Fort Worth
It truly pays to live and work in Dallas or Fort Worth. A new ranking from BusinessStudent.com puts the two cities — and Houston, too — among the top 10 places in the U.S. for stretching your salary.
To come up with its ranking, BusinessStudent.com examined the average annual salary for 127 white-collar “business” jobs listed on career website Indeed — such as HR director, marketing manager, and IT manager — and subtracted the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment, based on data from apartment search website Rent Jungle. According to that measure, Dallas is No. 4, Houston is No. 7, and Fort Worth is No. 9.
In all, BusinessStudent.com sifted through data for 65 major U.S. markets.
“When deciding where to work and live, it is critical to look at more than just what salary you can make,” BusinessStudent.com says. “Because if rents are sky high, you may net out at zero, or even worse with mounting credit card debt.”
The BusinessStudent.com study calculated an average yearly salary of $82,609 in Dallas and average monthly rent of $1,422 for a two-bedroom apartment. That resulted in a difference of $65,545, behind Palo Alto and San Jose, both in Northern California, and Detroit.
In Big D, at least, all types of workers are benefiting from stable rent growth. According to apartment search website Apartment List, the growth of rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Dallas has been flat of late, while it’s gone up 3.6 percent in Houston over the past year, 0.8 percent in Austin, 0.4 percent in San Antonio, and 1.8 percent statewide.
“Dallas is still more affordable than most other large cities across the country,” Apartment List says.
For Fort Worth, the average yearly salary for a white-collar job added up to $75,797, according to BusinessStudent.com, with average monthly rent of $1,108 for a two-bedroom apartment. That left a gap of $62,501.
In Houston, BusinessStudent.com computed an average yearly salary of and an average monthly rent of $79,579 for a two-bedroom apartment. The difference: $62,767.
Aside from Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, Irving (No. 12) and Plano (No. 19) showed up in BusinessStudent.com’s top 25.
In Irving, BusinessStudent.com discovered the average yearly salary was $77,527, with average monthly rent of $1,327 for a two-bedroom apartment. The difference was $61,603.
Plano had an average yearly salary of $75,988, with average monthly rent of $1,350 for a two-bedroom apartment. The gap: $59,788.
At the other end of the spectrum, College Station ranked No. 1 in the country for the lowest after-rent salary. There, the average yearly salary for a white-collar job was calculated at $55,086, with average monthly rent of $906 for a two-bedroom apartment. The leftover amount: $44,214.
San Antonio was the only other Texas city in the bottom 25. In the Alamo City, the average yearly salary was computed as $67,195, with average monthly rent of $1,195 for a two-bedroom apartment. The difference: $52,855. That put San Antonio at No. 12 among the bottom 25.
