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OCCUPATIONAL PAY COMPARISONS AMONG METROPOLITAN AREAS, 2008
Average pay for civilian workers in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA metropolitan area was
19 percent above the national average in 2008, one of 77 metropolitan areas studied by the National
Compensation Survey (NCS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.
The Brownsville-Harlingen, TX metropolitan area had a pay relative of 77, meaning workers earned an
average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by workers nationwide. Using data from the NCS, pay
relatives--a means of assessing pay differences--are available for each of the nine major occupational
groups within surveyed metropolitan areas, as well as averaged across all occupations for each area.
The average pay relative nationally for all occupations and for each occupational group equals 100.
(See table 1.)
A pay relative is a calculation of pay—wages, salaries, commissions, and production bonuses--for a
given metropolitan area relative to the nation as a whole. The calculation controls for differences among
areas in occupational composition, establishment and occupational characteristics, and the fact that data
are collected for areas at different times during the year. Simple pay comparisons calculating the ratio of
the average pay for an area to the entire United States in percentage terms would not control for interarea
differences in occupational composition and other factors, which may have a significant effect on pay relatives.
Pay relatives calculated for all occupations were significantly different from the national average in
65 of the 77 areas. Table A below lists selected metropolitan area pay relatives compared to average
pay nationally among those studied in the NCS. Table B provides selected metropolitan area pay relatives
for each of nine major occupational groups. In addition, area-to-area comparisons have been calculated
for all 77 metropolitan areas and will soon be available on the BLS website at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/payrel.htm.
Table A. Selected metropolitan area pay relatives (of 77 metropolitan areas surveyed)
Metropolitan Area Pay Relative (Average pay nationally = 100)
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 119
New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA 114
Boston-Worcester-Manchester, MA-NH 111
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, CA 109
Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV 109
Chicago-Naperville-Michigan City, IL-IN-WI 108
Philadelphia-Camden-Vineland, PA-NJ-DE-MD 105
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, GA-AL 100
Houston-Baytown-Huntsville, TX 98
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 97
Table B. Selected metropolitan area-to-national pay relatives for nine major occupational groups, 2008 (of 77 metropolitan areas surveyed)
Major Occupational Group Metropolitan Area Pay Relative
Management, business, and financial New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA 115
Salinas, CA 113
Professional and related Salinas, CA 120
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 119
Service San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 126
Salinas, CA 123
Sales and related Salinas, CA 129
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 122
Office and administrative support San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 120
New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA 116
Construction and extraction New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA 132
Chicago-Naperville-Michigan City, IL-IN-WI 131
Installation, maintenance, and repair Salinas, CA 124
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA 117
Production Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Truckee, CA-NV 121
Bloomington-Normal, IL 116
Detroit-Warren-Flint, MI 116
Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia, WA 116
Transportation and material moving Springfield, MA 114
Fort Collins-Loveland, CO 113
The pay relative for construction and extraction occupations in the New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA
area was 132, meaning the pay in the New York metropolitan area for that occupational group averaged 32 percent
more than the national average pay for that occupational group. By contrast, the pay relative for workers in
construction and extraction in the Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas area was 66, meaning pay for workers in those
occupations averaged 34 percent less than the national average. (See table 1.)
Using pay relative data
To assist data users in analyzing these data, tests have been conducted to determine whether differences between
each pay relative and the pay relative for the nation as a whole are statistically significant (that is, the difference
in pay for occupations in that area from the national average cannot be accounted for by sampling error). Similar
tests are conducted for the area-to-area comparisons. In Table 1, statistically significant pay relatives are denoted
with an asterisk (*). More information on pay relative controls, calculations, and significance testing is available
in the Technical Note.
Yearly differences in area and occupational group pay relatives do not infer changes in underlying economic conditions.
