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Job opportunities, cost of living put St. Pete on this ‘best places’ list

Margie Manning

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Photo credit: City of St. Petersburg Flickr

If you make around $60,000 a year and you’re not living in St. Petersburg, maybe you should be thinking about it.

A new survey from financial technology company SmartAsset ranks St. Petersburg as No. 23 among the “best places to live on a $60,000 salary.”

St. Petersburg, with a median household income of $61,631, was the only Florida city in the top 25 and one of just three in the southeast U.S.

“Strategically living in a place with robust employment opportunities and a lower cost of living can help Americans stretch their dollar further and enable them to sock away ample savings,” a report posted on the SmartAsset website said.

The largest income bracket in the United States is for household income between $50,000 and $74,999, according to Census data, and $60,000 is the sweet spot in that range. So for this survey, SmartAsset looked at 97 cities with a population of at least 60,000 and a median household income of between $55,000 and $65,000. It compared those cities across nine key measures: median household income, median monthly housing costs, housing costs as a percentage of a $60,000 income, entertainment establishments per 10,000 residents, civic establishments per 10,000 residents, percentage of people without health insurance, average commute time, unemployment rate and poverty rate.

Here are the details for St. Petersburg in each of the nine metrics SmartAsset considered: 

  • Poverty rate: 10.6 percent
    • St. Petersburg ranks 13th-lowest in this metric
  • Median household income: $61,631
    • St. Petersburg ranks 26th-highest in this metric
  • Entertainment establishments per 10,000 residents: 5.09
    • St. Petersburg ranks 26th-highest in this metric
  • July 2020 unemployment rate. 9.8 percent
    • St. Petersburg ranks 41st-lowest in this metric
  • Civic establishments per 10,000 residents: 7.82 
    • St. Petersburg ranks 47th-highest in this metric 
  • Median monthly housing costs: $1,163
    • St. Petersburg ranks 52nd-lowest in this metric 
  • Housing costs as a percentage of income: 23.26 percent
    • St. Petersburg ranks 52nd-lowest in this metric
  • Average commute time: 24.8 minutes
    • St. Petersburg ranks 52nd-lowest in this metric
  • Percentage of people without health insurance. 10.5 percent
    • St. Petersburg ranks 55th-lowest in this metric

This was the second year SmartAsset conducted the survey. No Florida city, including St. Petersburg, was on the 2019 list of best places to live on a $60,000 salary.

This year Sioux Falls, South Dakota came in No. 1 as a best place to live on $60,000, followed by Billings, Montana and Lincoln, Nebraska. St. Petersburg came in ahead of Santa Fe, New Mexico (No. 24) and Salem, Oregon (No. 25).

However, only a handful of the top 25 cities have what St. Petersburg can boast about — proximity to water, including a downtown waterfront.

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1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Avatar

    Kimberly Powell

    November 4, 2020at8:06 am

    We will lose that now!

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