Seeking salary advice: moving from Paris to NY

[yongur]

Hi Everybody,

I am new to this forum, and glad I found it.
I'm a professional retoucher in Paris, working full time for a high-end retouching agency, mainly for advertising, but also for some magazines. I have been working as a freelance for two years, and for almost a year now for this company.

And so, not knowing so well the market over there, I would like to have your advice. I have read a couple of threads dealing with similar questions, but they are now a couple of years old, and did not include concrete straight answers, hence the new thread.

What I need to know is basically how much would be a reasonable salary for a full-time in house senior retoucher in a high-end agency.
I consider myself senior (and they do too) because my three years experience include lots of high-profile client work and the demand level of their clients is really very high. I also have a diploma from a very good and highly reputed school of photography and retouching here in Paris.

I could not find an exact match of this post on monster.com.
I'm not asking you to reveal your salary (reading threads here I understood it was delicate...), but I would appreciate the input about what you think is reasonable.

I'm to arrive to the US in the spring/summer, and so, if you have other suggestions, ideas or input that can help me, I would appreciate it as well.

Thanks everyone,

[Ant]

3 years, regardless of what you have done will make it hard for you to garner full Senior salary unless your portfolio is really outstanding. Expect to be offered $60-$75,000 annually.

Senior otherwise, while negotiable and dependent on the place, will be in the range of $90-$120,000

[yongur]

Thanks a lot for this answer.
I reckoned something around what you suggested, but was told by a guy who used to work in NY and in this business, that it should be more like 90,000$ annual. By what you're saying I guess he situated me in the second group. Is it really a clear cut depending on the number of experience years? thanks a lot anyway for this input.

[Ant]

It's not clear cut. However, there are a lot of bigger shops offering even less and expecting more. I would say 90,000 is about perfect for a senior to start, but if you were to look around a bit at Retoucher wanted positions, you'll see that 5-7 years experience is the norm and they are offering less money.

You say you are coming from Paris, can you send me a private message telling me where you are working and will be working? I have a suspicion.... and if it's correct, you could garner a bit more, or at least start at around 90.