
The Geography of High-Paying Jobs in the US - acangiano
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/08/the-geography-of-high-paying-jobs/60918/
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whakojacko
Fun to see these kind of maps, but they are pretty useless without a
discussion of purchasing power in those areas. The Bay Area and Bos-Wash all
have above average cost of living too...

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kgroll
Agreed. I'd be more interested in seeing average salary by region contrasted
with the average cost of living for those same regions, which would identify
the most economical places to live in the US.

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acangiano
Agreed as well, ratios would work well, even though there are fixed costs that
are virtually identical across the country. Because of such expenses, a higher
income in an expensive place may still have an edge over a lower income in a
cheap place, if the ratio for the former is only slightly less than the ratio
for the latter.

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sp332
Hm, (Income - Cost of Living) / Purchasing Power?

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msluyter
I vote for:

(average income - average COL) / average COL = relative purchasing power

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sp332
I don't think so. That would be

    
    
      p=(i-c)/c
    

or just

    
    
      p=i/c-1
    

which would mean that purchasing power is directly proportional to cost of
living.

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minouye
Since the wage data is publicly available, does anyone know how I would go
about replicating these maps? I know I could use Google's charting API's for
County/US state level, but how would I go about mapping data at the US county
level?

Just always wondered how that would work :)

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enf
You can download the bounds of each US county (and many other political
subdivisions) as shapefiles from the Census TIGER/Line repository.
<http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/>

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techiferous
It would be interesting to see how this correlates to population density.
Also, college density.

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adamc
Population density: <http://www.mapofusa.net/us-population-density-map.htm>

There is obviously some correlation. I find it hard to tell just by looking
how much of the variance that explains.

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jacoblyles
It would be my instinct to group health care and education jobs in the service
category rather than the creative class category.

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jscore
So the answer is SF, DC, and NY. Call me shocked.

