Occupational Pay Relatives news release text


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                     OCCUPATIONAL PAY COMPARISONS AMONG METROPOLITAN AREAS, 2006

     Average pay in the San Francisco metropolitan area was 19 percent above the national
average in 2006, the highest among the 78 metropolitan areas studied by the National
Compensation Survey (NCS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor
reported today.  In contrast, pay was lowest in the Brownsville, Texas metropolitan area
with a pay relative of 78, meaning Brownsville workers earned an average of 78 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 9 major occupational groups
within 78 metropolitan areas, as well as averaged across all occupations for each area. (See
table 1.)  Table A below lists the five highest and five lowest paying metropolitan areas
among those studied in the NCS.  In addition, similar area-to-area comparisons have been
calculated for all 78 areas and will soon be available on the BLS website at
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/payrel.htm.

Table A.  Highest and lowest metropolitan area pay relative rankings (of 78 metropolitan areas surveyed)

 Rank                  Metropolitan Area                                 Pay Relative
    1.           San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA                         119
    2.           New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA      114
    3.           Salinas, CA                                                113
    4.           Boston-Worcester-Lawrence, MA-NH-ME-CT                     112
                 Hartford, CT                                               112

   74.           Corpus Christi, TX                                          87
                 Great Falls, MT                                             87
                 Johnstown, PA                                               87
                 Springfield, MO                                             87
   78.           Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito, TX                        78


     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 versus 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.  More information on pay relative controls and calculations are available
in the Technical Note.

     The pay relative in 2006 for workers in construction and extraction occupations in the
San Francisco area was 122, meaning the pay in San Francisco for that occupational group
averaged 22 percent more than the national average pay for that occupational group.  By
contrast, the pay relative for workers in construction and extraction occupations in the
Brownsville, Texas area was 67, meaning pay for workers in those occupations averaged 33 percent
less than the national average.  Pay relatives calculated for all occupations were significantly
different from the national average in 68 of the 78 areas.

     The National Compensation Survey (NCS), introduced in 1997, collects earnings and other
data on employee compensation covering over 800 detailed occupations in 152 metropolitan and
nonmetropolitan areas.  Average occupational earnings from the NCS are published annually for
78 metropolitan areas and for the United States as a whole.  Beginning in 2006, the NCS
implemented a number of significant survey changes including imputing for temporary non-response
situations and benchmarking estimated employment.  For more details on these changes, see the
article at http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20070122ar01p1.htm.

Using pay relative data

     To assist data users with the use of 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 pay for the given occupation in that area is
too different from the national average to be accounted for by the randomness of the survey’s
sample).  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 significance testing is available in the Technical Note.

     Data users are cautioned not to use yearly differences in area and occupational pay
group differences in pay relatives to infer changes in underlying economic conditions.

Table of Contents

Last Modified Date: October 11, 2007