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Tokyo slips! Down one spot, now only the fourth most expensive city for expats!

June 19, 2007
By Ken Worsley


Mercer Human Resource Consulting has released their 2007 annual rankings of the most expensive cities for expatriates, and Moscow has stayed on top while Tokyo slid from the third to the fourth spot. London climbed from number five to number two, and Seoul fell one place to number three. Rounding out the top five is Hong Kong.

If you’re looking for the budget expat experience, Asuncion in Paraguay was the least expensive city surveyed for the fifth year running, coming in at #143.

Although Moscow remained on top apparently due to rising housing costs, and London is notoriously famous for such, one has to wonder if the property value boom in Tokyo might help push it back towards the top.

At the end of its description, Mercer included this line in both bold and italic text: We do not recommend that expatriates use these figures to compare their own compensation packages.

Don’t worry, Mercer! Expats in Tokyo use a different yardstick, but it wouldn’t be a secret if I told!

Filed Under Econ Light, Economic Reports, Economics, Employment, Foreigners, Japan 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Tokyo slips! Down one spot, now only the fourth most expensive city for expats!”

  1. John on June 20th, 2007 1:38 am

    Moscow’s ahead in being depressing, as well.

    What’s the formula for comparing compensation packages? In Tokyo, I always thought it was divide the number of beers you drank at Heartland last night by how much an hour you make teaching English times how many Japanese words you actually know.

  2. Reality on June 20th, 2007 3:45 am

    No, you just have to multiply your salary by the amount of ass you get. By that measure, male expats in Tokyo pretty much beat out every other city in the world.

  3. Jazzy on June 21st, 2007 12:27 am

    you just have to multiply your salary by the amount of ass you get.

    Sounds kinda gay…

    I think the yardstick is this: Subtract your rent from your salary…Oh wait, I don’t pay rent.

  4. dude on November 21st, 2007 1:43 am

    wait a second, back up… How much ass do you guys get?!
    I live in Moscow and thought i had this all figured out… Is there something I should know here? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.

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