Total compensation comparison, US vs Europe: $170,000 in New York against £100,000 in London
By Skyler Bissell · October 20, 2026 · 11 min read
A $170,000 offer in New York and a £100,000 offer in London are $36,310 apart once the pound is converted at today's rate, which makes the London job look like a 20% pay cut. After income tax the New York offer is $20,196 ahead. After rent, healthcare and the rest of a year's bills it is $5,708 ahead, and the London contract carries 28 paid days off by law where the New York one carries none. So the London offer turns out to be a close second, and the only way to see that is to build the comparison in the right order.
Total compensation is everything a job pays you in a year: salary, bonus and equity, the money the employer puts into your pension, and the paid time off. Comparing it between a US offer and a European one means pricing the same things on both sides, in each city's own currency, and leaving out the money an employer spends that never reaches you. Done that way, a $36,310 gap on paper between New York and London shrinks to $5,708 a year in cash.
TL;DR
- On these two offers, London's tax bill is lighter than New York's in both dollars and percent, and the gap that opens on paper mostly closes at the rent line. The full sheet.
- London's 28 statutory days off are worth about $14,600 at the day rate; a typical US contract in its first year gives 19 days. Pricing the time.
- At this salary New York's paid family leave is worth more than Britain's statutory maternity and paternity pay. Parental leave.
The household is one person, single, no children, renting a one-bedroom flat in each city, putting nothing into a pension and flying home to nobody, so that both columns describe the job and nothing else. Both offers are illustrative: $170,000 is a mid-to-senior New York tech offer, and £100,000 is a senior one in London, which is the shape of the two markets.
The two offers on one sheet
| Line | New York offer | London offer |
|---|---|---|
| Salary | New York: $170,000 | London: £100,000 ($133,690) |
| Income tax and employee contributions | New York: $58,150 (34.2%) | London: £31,443 (31.4%) |
| Take-home | New York: $111,850 | London: £68,557 ($91,654) |
| Healthcare you pay yourself | New York: $4,490 | London: £690 |
| Rent, one bedroom | New York: $49,465 | London: £29,419 |
| Net cash after a year's costs | New York: $44,732 | London: £29,190 ($39,024) |
| Paid days off required by law | New York: 0 | London: 28, including 8 bank holidays |
| Those days at the day rate | New York: $0 | London: £10,769 ($14,397) |
| Statutory parental leave, one child, both parents | New York: $29,485 | London: £17,186 ($22,976) |
| Salary that would match the other offer | New York: $160,238 matches London's £100,000 | London: £111,236 matches New York's $170,000 |
Engine figures, 2026 rules, one person aged 35 to 44, at the exchange rate in our build. New York tax is federal, state and city income tax plus Social Security, Medicare and the state's paid-leave and disability premiums; London tax is income tax and employee National Insurance. Healthcare is what the employee pays: in New York the worker's share of an employer plan's premium plus deductibles and dental, in London prescriptions and dentistry. Net cash also takes out transit, food and everyday spending in each city. The day rate is salary over 260 working days; parental leave counts both parents' statutory weeks for one child, priced at this salary.
Read down the columns and the gap changes size at every line. That is the whole method in one table, and the six steps below are the order to fill it in for your own offers.
Step 1: Put both salaries in one currency
Convert the London salary at today's rate and you get $133,690, which is $36,310 short of New York. Write it down and then stop trusting it. It is the number recruiters, offer-comparison spreadsheets and friends at dinner all quote, and it is the least informative line on the sheet, because the London salary will be taxed in pounds, spent in pounds and charged London rent in pounds. A currency converter answers a question you will not be asking once you live there. Why the conversion misleads, and by how much on typical offers, is on converting a salary from dollars to euros; the same logic runs for pounds.
Step 2: Take out tax, then the healthcare the job does not cover
New York takes $58,150 of the $170,000, which is 34.2%: federal income tax, New York State and New York City income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and the state premiums for paid family leave and disability. London takes £31,443 of the £100,000, 31.4%, made of income tax and National Insurance. The British share is the lower of the two. On these offers London's tax bill is also $16,115 smaller in dollars, the opposite of what the reputation of European taxes would predict. Part of the reason is that HMRC charges 40% only from £50,271 and employee National Insurance falls to 2% above £50,270, while a New Yorker pays two layers of local income tax on top of the federal one.
Then take out the healthcare the job does not pay for. The New York employee's share of the premium, deductibles, coinsurance and dental come to $4,490 a year at our engine's rates. The London employee pays £690 for prescriptions and the dentist, because the NHS is funded from the tax line above. After both steps the New York offer is still ahead, by $20,196 of take-home less the $3,568 it spends on cover that London's taxes already bought.
Step 3: Price the paid days off at the day rate
Time off has a price, and the price is your salary divided by the 260 working days in a year: $654 a day in New York and £385 in London. The British floor is 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which GOV.UK puts at 28 days for a five-day week and which an employer may use to cover the 8 bank holidays. The US floor is zero: the Department of Labor states that federal law does not require payment for vacations or holidays. Priced at the day rate, London's 28 days are worth £10,769, and New York's statutory zero is worth nothing.
Nobody takes a New York tech job with no paid days off, though, so compare the contracts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found in March 2026 that private-sector workers who get paid vacation average 11 days after one year of service and 16 after five, plus 8 paid holidays. A first-year New York contract on that average gives 19 days, worth $12,423. London's floor is 9 days more, worth £3,462 ($4,628) at the London day rate. By year five the US average closes to 24 days and London's lead to 4.
Two cautions keep this line honest. These are gross values, priced at salary, while the net-cash gap in step 2 is after tax, so the after-tax worth of a day off is the share of salary each city lets you keep: 65.8% in New York and 68.6% in London. And both columns are floors or averages; your offer letter is the authority. Many London tech employers give 25 days plus bank holidays, and many New York ones give 20 or an unlimited policy, which unlimited PTO against a European entitlement prices separately. The statutory floor for every country we cover is on vacation days by country. Sick days are a separate floor again, and on these two cities it runs the other way: sick leave in Europe and the US shows a week off paying in full in New York and a flat £123.25 in London.
Step 4: Price parental leave once, and only if a child is coming
Parental leave belongs on the sheet if a child is likely while you hold the job, and it belongs there as a one-off per child. Adding it to the annual total is the mistake that makes European offers look better than they are in every year without a baby.
On the statutory floor New York wins this line, and comfortably. New York's Paid Family Leave gives each working parent up to 12 weeks at 67% of their average weekly wage, capped in 2026 at $1,228.53 a week, and at this salary the cap binds. Britain's statutory maternity pay is 90% of earnings for 6 weeks and then £194.32 a week for 33 more, and statutory paternity pay is 2 weeks at the same weekly rate. Counting both parents' weeks for one child and pricing them at this salary, New York's leave is worth $29,485 and London's £17,186, so New York comes out $6,509 ahead. The statute is only the floor, and plenty of London employers pay enhanced maternity pay for six months or more. That is a clause to ask for. Further into Europe the floor gets far higher; what Nordic parental leave is worth prices one.
Step 5: Add the employer money that reaches you, and leave off the rest
An American benefits statement counts things a London one does not, and the fix is to keep only what lands in your own account or pension.
Count the pension money. A 401(k) match is real compensation, but no law requires one (the IRS describes employer contributions as an option), and it only arrives if you defer salary to collect it. Vanguard's How America Saves 2026 puts the average promised match at 4.7% of pay. A UK employer must enrol you in a workplace pension and pay at least 3% of qualifying earnings, the band from £6,240 to £50,270, which is about £1,321 a year at this salary and about 1.3% of it; many employers pay more, and the minimum assumes you stay in the scheme. If the two contracts differ here by more than a couple of percent of salary, the difference goes on the sheet.
Leave off the employer's share of the health premium. KFF's 2025 survey puts the average single premium at $9,325 with the worker paying $1,440, which implies about $7,885 from the employer. That money buys the plan whose cost to you is already in step 2, and London's equivalent spending is in the National Insurance that funds the NHS, so counting it on one side only double-counts the healthcare and flatters the New York column. The same goes for the employer's own payroll taxes, including the 15% employer National Insurance a London employer pays above £5,000 of salary: it is the employer's cost of hiring you, which what an employee costs an employer sets out country by country. Equity is the one big item left, and it needs its own treatment, because it rarely travels: equity compensation in Europe and the US works through what a US grant is worth on a sheet like this.
Step 6: Check the sheet against the equivalent salary
You now have a column of figures, and the temptation is to add them up.
Don't, or at least not without the warning that comes with it. The lines are in different units (salary and day values are gross, take-home and net cash are after tax), the tax on each line moves with the salary you are trying to compare, and rent moves further than any benefit. Putting a dollar value on benefits walks through why the assembly is circular and does not reduce to addition. The honest single number comes from solving it: find the salary in each city that leaves you the same net cash after tax, rent, healthcare and everyday costs.
For these two offers, £100,000 in London leaves the same net cash as $160,238 in New York, so the New York offer is worth a little more than the London one on cash alone and far less than the paper gap said. Run it the other way and London would need £111,236 to match New York's $170,000. The last stretch of that is expensive: between £100,000 and £125,140 HMRC withdraws the personal allowance at £1 for every £2 earned, so roughly 62p of each extra pound goes to income tax and National Insurance, and a London raise in that band buys less than its headline. Put the cash answer beside the time in step 3 and the leave in step 4, and you have a comparison you can defend line by line.
That is also the frame for the bigger question of what any move abroad has to pay to keep your life whole, which runs on the equivalent salary abroad.
FAQ
Do European offers include a bonus or a 13th month?
Many do, through custom or a collective agreement, and the shape varies by country. Spanish and Portuguese salaries are often quoted as 14 payments and many German and Italian ones as 13, and the Dutch 8% holiday allowance is usually included in the annual figure or stated as extra. A London offer is normally twelve equal months plus any performance bonus. Whatever the shape, put the annual total on the sheet, which is the figure the tax is charged on.
How do I compare unlimited PTO with 28 guaranteed days?
Price the guaranteed days at the day rate and price the unlimited policy at the days you expect to take, which surveys put below what fixed policies grant. An unlimited policy gives no entitlement you can claim or be paid out for when you leave, so the honest number for it is the days your future team takes in practice. Ask them before you sign.
Which exchange rate should I use?
Today's mid-market rate is fine for the paper gap in step 1, because every later step works in each city's own currency and only converts at the end. What the rate cannot do is compare costs, and a ten percent swing in the pound moves the paper gap far more than it moves the net-cash gap, since rent, tax and the paycheck are all in pounds once you live there.
Does my US benefits statement already count all of this?
A total rewards statement counts what the employer spends: the employer's share of the health premium, any 401(k) match, often the employer's payroll taxes. That is a useful number for the employer and the wrong one for this comparison, because a London employer's equivalent spending sits in National Insurance and buys the NHS. Use the statement for the match and for your own premium share, and leave the rest off both sides.
To build the sheet for your own pair, open the New York to London comparison and type both offers in: the Take-home tab prints the tax lines, the Breakdown tab the costs, and the Overview the salary that keeps you even. For any other pair, start the calculator from your current city.
Sources. UK paid holiday, 5.6 weeks and bank holidays: GOV.UK, holiday entitlement and GOV.UK, bank holidays. UK income tax bands and the personal allowance taper: GOV.UK, income tax rates and personal allowances; National Insurance and the 2026 to 2027 thresholds: HMRC, rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027. Statutory maternity and paternity pay: GOV.UK, maternity pay and GOV.UK, paternity pay. Workplace pension minimums: GOV.UK, workplace pensions. New York Paid Family Leave 2026: New York State Paid Family Leave. US vacation and holidays: US Department of Labor, vacation leave and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2026. Employer health premiums: KFF, 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey. 401(k) contributions: IRS, 401(k) plan overview; average match: Vanguard, How America Saves 2026. All pages retrieved 19 October 2026. Every figure in the sheet is computed by cityparity's engine; per-field provenance is in data/_meta.json, per the methodology.
Figures here come from cityparity's per-city engine and were current at publication; tax rates, benefit caps and exchange rates move, so treat any single number as a strong estimate and run your own inputs. Where our comparison pages quote an equivalent salary, it is the bar an offer has to clear in the destination city and it is not a job offer. See the methodology.