Mumbai expat professional salaries soar to highest in world

It may have been a long time coming, but Mumbai’s place as the city with the world’s highest-paid expats wasn’t exactly unexpected.

Expat professionals lucky enough to have relocated to India’s largest and most important city are taking home annual salaries as high as $217,165, twice the global average expat wage of $99,903. The release of the latest Expat Explorer survey didn’t come as much of a surprise to expat professionals, as that kind of news spreads fast, but those working in San Francisco might have been slightly jealous as they only take home some $207.227.

No less than four Asian cities featured in the world’s top ten payers, with Shanghai, Hong Kong and Jakarta up there with the usual US and Europe suspects. In the real world, expats looking for the perfect job should concentrate on the USA and UK, according to the same survey. The top five international cities for expat-style job opportunities are Birmingham, Dublin, New York, London and San Francisco.

San Francisco comes out tops for earnings at an average of $207,227, followed by New York at $182,240. The average salary offered in London is $107,836, which might just cover expenses, and expats in Dublin, now known as a very expensive city, earn just $91,419 on average. Birmingham is, fortunately for its expat population, a comparatively cheap place to live, as average salaries are just $61.950, yet another good reason to avoid the sprawling Midlands city unless you really want that particular job.