Any other salary comparison tools besides homefair.com?

[NewJeffCT]

my wife & myself get contacted on occasion for jobs outside of our area in Hartford, CT. We kind of have an understanding that if one of us has a good career opportunity at another location, we'd move as a family.

However, in trying to determine cost of living between one area and another is not always easy. I usually try homefair.com, but lately it does not seem too good. Are there any other decent ones?

As an example, I put the standard $100K salary in my hometown in the Hartford area. My wife was recently contacted about a job in Billerica, Mass. it says that if we make $100K in my town, we'd need to make like $90K in Billerica to live an equivalent life. So, I figure that is pretty cheap for so close to Boston... so, I figure it must be bad schools. I go to realtor.com and get the school quality report and over 80% of high school seniors go on to college & the average SAT score is close to 1100 - both a bit better than my town in CT. Then, I search on homes in Billerica and a home that is somewhat equivalent to our home in CT costs like 50% more. I'm also pretty sure that Mass has the highest car insurance rates in the nation, too... So, unless the Mass government is subsidizing folks in the Boston area on a large scale, it does not seem too accurate.

And, a while back, I was contacted about a job in North Jersey... via homefair.com, it said it was like 8 or 10% more than my town in CT. But, then going online to realtor.com, anything close to my home in CT is well over $1 million, or like 2-3 times what we could get for our home if we sold it.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. Without checking homefair, I can say that most of the Hartford

area would require less income than Billerica. One possible explanation is that if your current community is essential all stand alone single family homes the cost of housing compared to Billerica would be skewed because Billerica has other, lower cost, types of housing such as townhouses and condos and on average the cost of housing would appear lower. Homefair uses average cost of housing as 1/3 of the factor in the salary calculator. It claims the input values are updated quarterly but I doubt it.

[NewJeffCT]

2. that might be a reason

probably why it's fairly accurate for places like Fairfied Cty, CT

[ashling]

3. Ithink most state workforce sites

have job stat info or links to it. I know that the Washington state Workforce site has a link to some of this.