Been struggling to make ends meet recently? It’s no surprise, according to some interesting new statistics.
A league table of the best cities in Britain to make a living puts York in 46th place out of 64.
That places the city in the bottom third. On the Cost Of Living ranking alone, York is put at 61 out of 64 cities.
The figures were calculated by Totally Money.
They compared median wages to mortgage repayments, cost of living and the health of the job markets in each town.
The calculations focused on working and living in each town, with no points awarded for scenery, culture, or connections to the rest of the UK.
The York verdict
‘York Minster towers over the picturesque city, where tourists totter around the winding streets of the Shambles, kept going by the fudge shops that are found through every other doorway’ – Totally Money
Overall Ranking | 46/64 |
Median monthly take-home salary | £1,397 |
Average monthly mortgage repayment | £999 |
Cost of living rank | 61/64 |
Unemployment | 4.3% |
Job growth | 0% |
Job market health rank | 37/64 |
Best and worst
At the top of the table was Blackburn, where average mortgage repayments are just 21% of the median take-home salary and the cost of living is significantly lower.
It was followed by Derby, Cambridge, Sunderland, and Milton Keynes.
According to this analysis, the worst place to make a living in Britain is Gloucester, followed by Rochdale, Blackpool, Newport, and Burnley.
York was two places below Leeds in the table, but above the worst rated Yorkshire city, Hull in 58th place.
Alastair Douglas is CEO of Totally Money, a credit comparison website. He said too often only mortgage payments are taken into account when trying to identify the best place to live.
When we take into consideration job prospects and the cost of living as well as property prices we start to see a very different picture – some of the UK’s less frequently celebrated places start to look much more attractive.