$200,000 As the New Black, Or How the Other 92.5 Percent Lives

It may not rise to the level of the kind of Sunday Styles article that makes you want to flee New York, but it’s almost as obnoxious. “Six Figures? Not Enough!”:

There was a time not long ago when earning six figures was a significant milestone among upwardly mobile professionals. If you were young and single in one of the nation’s big cities, you could live in a building with a doorman, drive a European car, eat at fine restaurants and vacation in Jackson Hole. For married people it meant a suburban home and college savings accounts for the children.

Beyond the lifestyle, $100,000 was a psychic achievement; it meant joining the meritocratic elite. The prospect of “six figures” kept white-collar workers toiling for 20 years, confident that hard work would be rewarded and that the American social contract was securely in place.

Certainly $100,000, which is more than twice the national median household income of $43,527, is still a princely wage in most of the country, placing you in the top 5.2 percent of American wage earners with full-time jobs, according to the 2000 census. Even in New York City, only 7.5 percent of full-time workers make that much. But $100,000 isn’t what it used to be. It has been devalued, in the practical sense by inflation and psychologically because it is now a relatively common salary for newcomers in fields like law and banking. For today’s executive strivers in the more affluent cities, there is a new grail: $200,000.

When you read these sort of Sunday Styles articles, you inevitably wonder who these people are; it seems that everyone but you (and the writer) are in on the joke. But now we know — these articles are aimed at only 7.5 percent of the city. It’s then that you realize that the article is riding that thin line between obnoxious and mocking. And this time we’re on the safe side of mockery! See in particular:

“It’s the new black,” said Bill Coleman, senior vice president in charge of compensation at Salary.com, an online career service based in Needham, Mass., that tracks executive pay. “There’s a lot of bunching between $100,000 and $150,000. That’s the vast majority of the people who used to aspire to $100,000. Now they are aspiring to $200,000 or $250,000.”

“It’s the players,” he added, echoing a common sentiment, “who make $200,000.”

Where does the money go? It’s easy:

Adjusted for cost-of-living inflation in the New York metropolitan region, a $100,000 income in 1987 would be worth about $170,000 today. And yet it still seems that another $30,000 or more is needed to be a “player.” Part of the explanation may be the almost perverse escalation in the price of commodities favored by upwardly mobile professionals: whether $170 Diesel jeans, which have replaced $30 Levis; $3.95 lattes from Starbucks versus 25-cent coffee from a deli; or the must-have $449 iPod that supplanted the must-have $75 Sony Walkman of the Reagan years.

To think that people once paid $75 for a Walkman — it just boggles the mind. And with that I’ll slink back into the humdrum hand-to-mouth existence of the other 92.5 percent of the city . . .