Monday, September 19, 2011

Moving to Austin



Today we look at moving to Austin in USA from Kiev in Ukraine. We highlight cost of living and other major differences likely to be experienced in our series of short blogs on moving between different international locations.

In Austin people speak English. In Kiev people speak Ukrainian (official) and Russian.
Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. Kiev is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine. Austin is considered to be a major center for high tech. Thousands of graduates each year from the engineering and computer science programs at The University of Texas at Austin provide a steady source of employees that help to fuel Austin's technology and defense industry sectors. Austin is also emerging as a hub for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Kiev is a major administrative, cultural and scientific centre of the Ukraine. It is the largest city in Ukraine in terms of both population and area and enjoys the highest levels of business activity.
The overall cost of living rank in Austin is 263 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from Kiev to Austin will experience a change in cost of living of -17.2%.

In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Austin is ranked as a minimal hardship location with a hardship index of 10% compared to Kiev with a hardship index of 30% which is a high degree of hardship location.

Source: Cost of Living Austin USA as at July 2011.

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