Paychecks provide more spending power in the North Bay, according to a study.
Few people feel their paycheck stretches as far as they’d like it to, but there seems to be a bit more elasticity in the North Bay, according to a recent study.
Both Marin and Sonoma counties rank among the 58 counties in California with the highest “paycheck friendliness,” according to a survey from financial website SmartAsset. Marin ranked No. 4 overall, with Sonoma County checking in at 6. San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties were the top three, respectively, despite their high costs of housing. Napa County finished at 14.
The company’s annual study looked at four factors: semi-monthly paycheck, purchasing power, unemployment rate and income growth. To best compare paycheck-friendliness across counties, the methodology used the median household income in the U.S. ($74,580) as a base annual salary—and then indexed the paycheck amount for each county to reflect the counties with the lowest withholding burden, or greatest take-home pay.
Researchers then created a purchasing power index for each county. “This reflects the counties with the highest ratio of household income to cost of living,” according to a review of the results at smartasset.com. The final rankings folded in unemployment rates and income growth, which calculated the annual growth in median income throughout a five year period for each county.—
