Geneva, a city that gives you more money after taxes, and lets you spend it quickly
Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva and Zurich among the top five priciest cities in the world, along with Oslo, Copenhagen and Toky, according to a study by bank UBS comparing prices and earning in 73 cities around the world. Salaries are highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US, with workers in Geneva and Zurich having the highest net incomes in the world. The average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one-fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
Prices for food in Switzerland are about 45 percent more for food on average than in the rest of Western Europe but to balance it out “no other city allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva.”
UBS notes that the comparisons are greatly affected by currency fluctuations. London fell 20 places in the cost categories thanks to the pound’s “precipitous devaluation” in the first half of 2009.
For the first time a non-food product was used to compare how many hours of work it takes to buy a globally uniform item: the average worker in Geneva or Zurich will have to put in nine hours to buy an iPod nano with 8 GB of space, but in Mumbai workers need 20 times that work time to buy one.
Zurich, where a coffee can come with charm, but not cheaply
Globally, it takes 37 minutes on average to earn enough to buy a Big Mac, 22 minutes for a kilo of rice and 25 minutes for a kilo of bread.
People in Cairo and Seoul work the longest hours, some 600 hours a year more than their counterparts in Europe. French workers in Lyon and Paris work the least, just over 1,500 hours a year.
The study, carried out in March and April 2009 used a standardized basket of 122 goods and services. “When rent prices are factored into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live. The basket costs the least in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai,” the report indicates.
“Prices and earnings” in pdf, available on UBS site.
Related: TSR, Fre
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News story, GenevaLunch, 19 August 2009.
Filed under: Business
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