September 29, 2006 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Comparisons of pay between metropolitan areas, 2005
The pay relative averaged across all occupations for workers in the San Francisco, California, metropolitan area was 117 in 2005, meaning that pay on average was 17 percent higher in that area than in the nation as a whole.
![Occupational pay relatives, San Francisco, CA and Brownsville, TX metropolitan areas, 2005](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925045208im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2006/sept/wk4/art05.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
By contrast, pay averaged across all occupations in the Brownsville, Texas,
metropolitan area was 19 percent below the national average.
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.
Pay relatives have been prepared for each of 9 major occupational groups within
78 Metropolitan Statistical Areas and have been averaged across all occupations
for each area. Pay relatives averaged for workers in all occupations in San
Francisco and Brownsville were, respectively, the highest and lowest among the
78 areas.
To give an example for a major occupational group, the pay relative in 2005 for
workers in construction and extraction occupations in San Francisco was 123. By
contrast, the pay relative for workers in construction and extraction
occupations in Brownsville was 72.
These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey program. Note that the San Francisco metropolitan area also includes Oakland and San Jose; the Brownsville area also includes Harlingen and San Benito. Learn more in
"Occupational Pay Relatives, 2005" (PDF) (TXT),
news release USDL 06-1680.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
.
Read more »