New York City's Top Earners Still Choose Manhattan Over Brooklyn

(Bloomberg) -- Brooklyn may claim the popularity contest, but Manhattan’s still home to the city’s highest earners.

That’s the upshot from a Bloomberg analysis of household earnings by zip code, which showed five of the top 20 areas with the highest adjusted gross income in the Northeast in Manhattan. None were in Brooklyn.

Zoom out a notch, though, and Manhattan loses its luster compared to the tony suburbs in the tristate area. In fact, half of the top 20 ZIP codes in the Northeast are in commuter towns in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Bloomberg evaluated IRS data for ZIP codes with more than 200 tax returns as of the 2015 filing season, and with 500 residential households according to the latest Census tally. More than 22,000 ZIP codes met the criteria.

Harrison, New York, was home to the Northeast’s highest earners, with average AGI of $976,200. Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, and Weston, Massachusetts, followed with the only other averages above $850,000. New Jersey’s first entrant was Far Hills at fourth, while Riverside, Connecticut, was sixth.

So the next time you’re on the Port Jefferson line on the LIRR, the New Haven Line on Metro-North, or running late on the Morristown Line on NJ Transit, appreciate the democratization of commuting. You could be next to a millionaire. Or maybe it’s you.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.