Report: Sacramento workers earn more than national average

Report: Sacramento workers earn more than national average

Sacramento workers in a variety of blue- and white-collar occupations were paid more than the national average in 2004, in some cases significantly more, according to figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The pay in Sacramento for nine major occupational groups, when averaged together, was 8 percent above the national average. The pay within each of these groups ranged from 5 percent to 13 percent above the national average.

The figures are drawn from the bureau's National Compensation Survey, conducted in July 2004. The bureau collected pay data from 78 metropolitan statistical areas across the country, and then calculated "pay relatives" for each area that compared its pay in nine occupational categories to the national average.

For Sacramento, here are the pay relatives for each occupational group:

Management, business and financial: 106, or 6 percent above the national average
Professional and related: 112
Service: 113
Sales and related: 108
Office and administrative support: 106
Construction and extraction: 105
Installation, maintenance and repair: 112
Production: 106
Transportation and material moving: 110
The pay figures include wages, salaries, commissions and production bonuses, and the calculation for each area is adjusted to control for occupational composition, the types of businesses, the concentration of union versus nonunion labor, the time of year the information was collected and other variables that might skew the numbers higher or lower, according to the bureau.

San Francisco had the highest pay relative across all occupations, with its workers earning 17 percent more than the national average. Brownsville, Texas, had the lowest, where workers earn 30 percent less than the national average.