Whether you work in a large city like New York or a smaller city like Atlanta may make a big difference in who brings home more money. Although workers in the big cities like New York earn a higher salary than their counterparts in Atlanta, employees in Atlanta get to take more of their paycheck home each year. A recent comparison by Business Insider shows that when you take the cost of living and taxes into consideration, workers in larger cities are having their paychecks eaten away by these deductions almost faster than they can earn it.

The information, which was taken from Symmetry’s PaycheckCity graphic, compares the annual take-home pay for cities across the country. They profile two different types of workers – the single worker making $40,000 a year and the married work who earns $40,000 per year. Overall, the married workers take home a higher net salary than single workers, and Atlanta fared better than the other larger metropolises.

For instance, in 2013 if you were single and making $40,000 per year, after taxes and other deductions, a person in Atlanta would actually bring home $30,814, while a single worker in New York would bring home only $29,454.  A married worker in those same cities would bring home $31,483 in Atlanta and $31,556 in New York.

For those of you looking to relocate to a city with a higher average take-home pay, your Atlanta new home may be waiting on you. Currently, Atlanta is home to 13 Fortune 500 companies with two additional Fortune 500 companies located within the state. Companies such as The Home Depot and Coca-Cola were drawn to Georgia because of the various incentives offered, including the state’s low corporate tax structure and right-to-work status, and these incentives are continuing to draw some of the biggest names in business to our state.

With recent announcements from major companies such as Caterpillar, Kia, Wells Fargo and AirWAtch that they will be expanding in Atlanta or opening new facilities in our city, Atlanta’s job market is rebounding, and the unemployment rate has dropped to the lowest it has been in nearly four years. Between November 2011 and December 2012, the city added close to 58,000 new jobs. And in 2013, the trend of job creation is continuing, with the potential for more than 3,000 jobs to be created by companies that have announced expansion in the first four months of the year. According to Eugene James, the Atlanta Director for Metrostudy, this increased job creation is behind the increased demand for housing. The Department of Labor originally forecasted new monthly job creation to be around 33,000 jobs, but after numbers were finalized for April, it was found that there were 55,000 net new jobs created. Because of the drastic difference in the prediction and reality, we have seen builders struggle to keep up with demand for housing in prime Atlanta real estate. Area builders are reporting that nearly 50 percent of new homes being built have been pre-sold, which is big news for Atlanta, since it is typically not a strong pre-sale market.

If you are looking to move to the metro Atlanta area, there is no time like the present! With a higher average annual take-home pay than its peers, increased job growth from Fortune 500 companies and a booming housing market, Atlanta is the perfect city to call home.