Bay Area Among the Top in Salary Growth

Now from the Good News department (we certainly can use it). Bay Area graduates can look forward to having some of the best salary growth prospects in the country. According to Payscale.com and Yahoo Hot Jobs, the San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont area ranked #4 in the country for large metropolitan areas. The median average salary in the Bay Area for a recent college graduate is $73,800 and the growth rate over the past three years was 14%.

The Bay Area was a high-paying market to start with, notes Lee McPheters, director of the Economic Outlook Center at Arizona State University. Hiring highly skilled workers away from local competitors, as well as from across the country, requires a salary bump. The region is strong in health care, too, an industry where unemployment rates are low–3.2 percent for hospital workers–and labor shortages tend to drive up wages.

In further good news for graduates, the unemployment rate for new graduates was just 4.7% nationwide, compared to 9.7% for the country as a whole. We all know it’s been a difficult few years with the economy struggling to find solid footing but it’s nice to know that, here in Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon and the rest of the Tri-Valley, we live in one of the areas of growth that will help drive the economy and the country upward.