If there’s one good thing that can come out of a recession it’s that most things become more affordable. During the course correction, there are definitely some bargains to be had and sometimes increasing your bottom line can be as simple as changing your zip code. We’ve used the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from June 2008-June 2009 to create this map, which shows how US cities have been affected by the economic downturn. In all but one of the cities included, the cost of living is down, sometimes significantly so.
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19 Comments so far
leave a commentVery good map on showing how much living index is affected on different part of US. Despite that, it looks like the average consumer spending has been coming back up:
http://www.wealthalchemist.com/Blog/2009/07/economy-rebound-mintcom-data/
Should have included Phoenix on the map – it is big enough. Salt Lake would have been nice too.
I seriously hate living in San Francisco.
Boston Just raised the state sales tax 1.25%. That new found savings didn’t last very long!
So it looks like all the decline has come from energy and transportation, i.e.: the falling price of oil. This is emphasized by the fact that cities with the biggest public transit networks (NY, SF, DC) saw smaller declines in CPI.
Just wait for the recession to wear off, we’ll have oil back up to the $150 range before you know it.
the CPI is cooked
Here in Chicago they raised the sales tax to 10.25%. It seems they don’t consider taxes in their oh so accurate statistics.
How come this isnt a heat map and is instead what seam like random cities selected and exact values written out? This is hardly an infographic and more like a spreadsheet.
The answer to your question is included in the definition of CPI. It is calculated from a sample set of metropolitan areas, which are included on the map. They do not collect data in other cities.
OMgosh dude, I though Florida would reank higher than that!
RT
http://www.anon-web-tools.us.tc
Of course, our employers will think this is a really great chance to CUT our pay for 2010 because cost of living has gone down…
You would have gone A LOT further with a cost of living index showing not just a change from June 2008 to June 2009…
…but more importantly, June 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and THEN June 2009.
And if you wanted to be real, you’d use not just CPI or government statistics that include SUBSTITUTION and HEDONICS and other fake calculations, but real inflation data from http://www.ShadowStats.org. Because real inflation is rising at a much higher pace. (P.S. – Thank you for removing the cost of mortgages from the calculation.)
P.S. – From the NY Times: “Income Loss Persists Long After Layoffs”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/04layoffs.html
“…workers who had been with their companies at least three years, then lost their jobs when their employers reduced their work forces by at least 30 percent. He found that even 15 to 20 years later, most on average had not returned to their old wage levels. He also concluded that their earnings were about 15 percent to 20 percent less than they would have been had they not been laid off.”
This was based on a recent long-term study of Social Security income data people aged 40 or so (peak of their earning power and far from retirement), employed for at least 6 years, who were laid off, tracking them for 15 to 20 years after.
This shows that gas prices went down last year. Everything else has been going up, so when you hear on TV that there has been deflation, make sure you realize that deflation by their definition looks a lot like inflation. Soon we’ll begin to see the consequences of our monetary policy.
I can’t quite understand what you guys and gals are doing over there at Mint. I can understand if you are trying to monetize the information you collect from us users, but as long as you have all the quirks and defficiencies in Mint; I think it would be prudent to focus on ironing out the wrinkles first rather than spreading out and coming up with more, albeit flashy, rather meaningless visualizations.
The above map shows 14 metro areas, most of which are insignificant to the broader economy or people’s lives. You really need to work on the relevance of the data you collect by improving your site and broadening your customer/source base.
Your source/customers will only for so long tolerate the quirkiness of your site. Don’t make the error of ignoring this. Less flash, more bang!
Congratulations on what you do have going on and what you have built though! Promising product.
@marc, thanks for your comment. The team working on MintLife is independent of the team working on our product. The product team is hard at work on a new version of Mint.com which we hope will address your concerns. The data in the map came from the CPI which only includes the metro areas that are listed here.
In addition to only including a few metropolitan areas, you haven’t even included all the states ON your map. What’s happened to Alaska and Hawaii?
What alot of people seem to have missed, or not commented on at least, is WHAT led to the change in CPI. The chart at the bottom of the map shows this: a drop in transportation and energy costs.
Now, if this data is comparative to summer 2008 then we’re looking at very high gas prices as part of that cost, whereas gas has stayed relatively low for summer so far this year.
Really, this data does not tell you much about cost of living. The consumer goods other than transportation and energy all rose slightly, and these are the areas in which it is easiest to cut costs most of the time (rising costs in those areas makes that harder).
I’d love to see this chart made to be able to cover longer time ranges. For example, 2009 CPI data vs. not just 2008, but 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, etc. . .maybe back 10 years of so. It’d be even cooler if you could pick ranges spanning any two of those years. Here’s what I bet you’d find. Since the decline in CPI averages is so heavily skewed by declines in energy and transportation, I bet over the longer term (going back to before when oil spiked near $140 a barrel) you’re going to find that the general trend is still upward. The only thing causing the recent down dip is the decline in oil/energy prices back to more reasonable ranges. Second, it only stands to reason that because the price of energy (oil) has declined so drastically from where it was previously, that the cost of transportation would also logically see a decline to some degree which is exactly what we see here. Clearly oil is one of the major sources of energy that ultimately becomes the gasoline we use to power our vehicles. I think we should treat the recent “oil bubble” as more of anomalous non-recurring “one-time” expense on our financial statement and show the chart again as if it had increased or decreased steadily to where it is today from some given year in history like maybe 10 years ago just to pick an arbitrary range.