To find the cities where people earn the largest and smallest paychecks, we turned to Payscale.com, a site that has collected salary and career data from more than 35 million people. They looked at compensation data for professionals in the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (based on 2010 population estimates by the Census), and provided us with median pay for workers who hold at least a bachelor’s degree, across three experience levels: starting (5 or less years of experience), mid-career (10 or more years of experience) and overall (all years of experience).
No. 1 Best-Paying City: San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
Overall median pay: $93,100
Starting median pay: $68,600
Mid-career median pay: $128,000
No. 2 Best-Paying City: San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.
Overall median pay: $73,500
Starting median pay: $57,200
Mid-career median pay: $108,000
No. 3 Best-Paying City: Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.
Overall median pay: $68,700
Starting median pay: $53,300
Mid-career median pay: $95,500
No. 4 Best-Paying City: Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.Va.
Overall median pay: $67,300
Starting median pay: $52,600
Mid-career median pay: $101,000
No. 5 Best-Paying City: Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas
Overall median pay: $66,700
Starting median pay: $53,200
Mid-career median pay: $94,600
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