For employees, Chaumont is the second city in France where it is good to live to maximize your purchasing power.
The end of the year or the beginning of the new year is conducive to rankings of all kinds and, in particular, of cities. After the Meilleurtaux.com ranking based on salaries, real estate prices and the unemployment rate, here is that of the newspaper “Le Parisien”. It compared 614 living areas of at least 20,000 inhabitants based on around forty criteria such as employment, average salary, shops, services, the price of an average food basket, leisure, real estate prices, the density of doctors and pharmacists, access to 4G, fiber, etc.
The originality of this classification is that it is broken down into three socio-professional categories: executives and intellectual professions, workers and employees. For the first, Senlis, in the Manche, comes first. For the runners-up, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, in Savoie, emerges victorious and, for employees, Chaumont comes second, just behind Tulle, in Corrèze.
For employees, less dense urban areas systematically fare better and, in particular, capital cities like Tulle and Chaumont which manage a large part of local administration, including the prefectures. In addition, these capitals centralize numerous shops and public services, to which must be added an attractive price per m2 (€1,303 per m2 in Chaumont). The absence of a large metropolis near these cities strengthens their local roots.
Comment from the Parisian: “If the basins which monopolize the first places are located, for the most part, in the “diagonal of the void”, a name given to the area which connects the Meuse to the Landes due to its low population density, they represent good opportunities to maximize your purchasing power.” All categories combined, Chaumont is 12e out of the 614 basins explored.
Frédéric Thévenin
