Here’s some information that will either motivate you OR make you want to take a nap forever. In order to be among the top 5% of earners in New York state, aka one of the most expensive states in the country, you have to earn…
$480,780, on average, per year. The minimum threshold to make the cut is $250,000.
And that’s for the whole state, not New York City specifically.
These numbers come from the financial website GOBankingRates, which analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey and the Economic Policy Institute’s income inequality report.
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“New York is one of the eight states (including Washington, D.C.) that require at least $250,000 in income to crack the top 5%,” the website reported. “The mean household income of the 5-percenters is the second highest in the country, at $480,780.”
The numbers for the top 1% are a lot more dizzying. In New York, the top 1% of earners make an average of $2.2 million annually. That is exactly 42 times the average income earned by the bottom 99%. The minimum income to make the top 1% is $550,174.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Interestingly enough, the study also found that rich people do not consider themselves “rich,” per se. There’ll always be someone richer than you, unless you’re Jeff Bezos.
“Although people become less likely to consider themselves poor the more money they make, they don’t really become much more likely to consider themselves rich,” the report said. “The higher your income, the higher you set the bar.”
