no, usually cost of living is commensurate with population and employment opportunity density.
its your typical economics equation of supply and demand.
If you plop 500k jobs down in a 3 mile area the surrounding apartments and homes value and rental pricing is going to go through the roof due to demand. It doesn’t even initially matter how well paying those jobs are. The demand on the housing is going to drive prices up, and the prices of the housing is going to dictate the salaries that the jobs pay over a longer period of time.
You’ve seen fast food restaurants in NYC no doubt. Do you think those fast food places pay the same wages as the ones in Topeka or Boise? The wages in NYC are high because no one is going to commute for 30-60 minutes for a job that pays 10 bucks an hour, and no one making 10 bucks an hour can afford to get an apartment close enough to walk to the fast food place to work. Wages are driven up because of the cost of living, but the cost of living is driven up because of demand. Demand is driven up due to the jobs that are available. its all interlinked, but the wages are not just arbitrarily set to a high level because its DC.
Most of the jobs in the DC area that pay well happen to be related to Federal work....
And the fast food restaurants and other low-wage services industries in the DC area figured out how they can pay the same wages here that they do in Boise:
They just hire people that live 20 to a house.
“If you plop 500k jobs down in a 3 mile area the surrounding apartments and homes value and rental pricing is going to go through the roof due to demand. It doesn’t even initially matter how well paying those jobs are.”
Yes, it does matter how well paying those jobs are, because unless those houses are being purchased with cash, the mortgage applicant’s income determines how big of a loan they qualify for.