NJ good for high-earners, less so for low-earners

“New Jersey is in the top set of states when it comes to take-home earnings for workers in very high paying jobs,” said Michael Pao, co-founder of Trove Technologies, a storage company based in San Francisco.
“New Jersey is in the top set of states when it comes to take-home earnings for workers in very high paying jobs,” said Michael Pao, co-founder of Trove Technologies, a storage company based in San Francisco.

In fact, New Jerseyans with the Top 20 percent-paying occupations have better take-home earnings than those from 48 other states—as they’re paid about 23.5 percent higher than the national average. However, New Jerseyans in the bottom-80 percent paying occupations only outrank their colleagues in 10 states in terms of take-home earnings due to the state’s high housing costs.

New Jersey’s housing costs are 18.7 percent higher than the national average.

The Trove Discretionary Income Study shines light on regional differences in salaries, cost of living and taxes to more precisely reveal how much American workers across 778 occupations are really taking home.

No other cost-of-living calculators or studies take into account how taxes effect the cost of living or identify the significant differences by occupation, according to Trove.

Trove ranks general and operations managers, financial managers, construction managers, education administers and supervisors of sales workers as the top jobs in New Jersey.

Conversely, Trove ranks paper goods machine operators, forest/conservation technicians, automotive glass installers, pesticide handlers and grounds maintenance workers as the state’s bottom jobs.

“These rankings are calculated by sorting the occupations in this city based on how each occupation ranks against the same occupation in other cities,” according to the report.

You can view the full report here.