Average pay in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA metropolitan area was 19 percent above the national average in 2007, the highest among metropolitan areas studied by the National Compensation Survey (NCS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported.

In contrast, pay was lowest in the Brownsville-Harlingen, TX metropolitan area with a pay relative of 76, meaning Brownsville workers earned an average of 76 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 77 metropolitan areas, as well as averaged across all occupations for each area.

Pay relatives calculated for all occupations were significantly different from the national average in 67 of the 77 areas.

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.

The pay relative for construction and extraction occupations in the New York-Newark-Bridgeport area was 133, meaning the pay in the New York metropolitan area for that occupational group averaged 33 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.