Everyone’s making $291,497 in Silicon Valley
These tech worker wages will astound you
Posted on Thursday, August 21 at 1:28pm | By Kathleen PenderThe average annual wage for high-tech workers in San Francisco rose to $156,518 in 2013, up almost 19 percent from the year before. That ranked the city No. 1 for high-tech wage growth out of 34 markets nationwide, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data crunched by JLL, a commercial real estate services firm.
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The more astonishing statistic: The average tech wage on the mid-Peninsula (San Mateo County) last year was $291,497. Although that was down about 5 percent from 2012, it was still — by far — the highest average tech wage in the nation, surpassing Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) by almost $100,000.
Ok, I skimmed this article. There’s a lot of blah, blah, blah. Blah blah blah. My takeaway was that the average person in San Mateo makes almost $300,000.
This puts San Mateo at the top of the Real Bay Area.
Using the Silicon Valley rule of thumb that your home should be 10x your income that means soon the average home will be $3M!
Congratulations on all you San Mateans!! You are now the Real, Real Bay Area.
August 27th, 2014 at 8:34 am
I totally believe the average person makes $300,000 down there. Person, not household.
Let the bull market continue. Can’t wait for AirBnB and Uber to go public.
August 27th, 2014 at 8:44 am
Today’s lesson in mean vs. median, I suppose.
August 27th, 2014 at 9:21 am
I’ll take the mean, please! Interesting that when you boot Zuck’s 3.3 billion out of the mix the average drops from $290K to $220K. This allows a little algebra to discover that total compensation (including Zuck) is about $12 billion distributed over 41,250 jobs. If there’s approximately 400 houses sold in Palo Alto each year, there’s 100 eager buyers per listing (because it’s a perfectly reasonable to assume everybody is looking to buy a house all the time). Doesn’t take a math major to figure out that you need to overbid early and often!
August 27th, 2014 at 6:51 pm
I find it interesting that a real estate firm is tracking and reporting on tech wages.
August 27th, 2014 at 9:52 pm
Where do they get the data on salaries?
August 28th, 2014 at 4:07 pm
@3:
Zucks compensation isn’t anywhere near $3 billion annually, that’s his net worth.
The point still stands though: outliers can really screw up an average.
August 29th, 2014 at 7:02 am
I must point out that even though you are disparaging outliers as screwing up the mean, it does not stop Zuck from buying up 6 houses on his street, so he doesn’t have neighbors.
So in a context of real estate, and mean salary. Those who make WAY more are subject to purchase property on a whim, or as a retirement/investment plan.
If houses were only purchased to live, then this wouldn’t be so important.
August 29th, 2014 at 9:13 pm
Gallileo, actually Zuck’s stock sales last year (or maybe this year) were on the order of $3B. His net worth is ten times that.
September 3rd, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Congratulations to the peninsulares, in their immense wealth!
September 5th, 2014 at 10:48 am
Hey, my annual income suddenly tripled over night.
What the hell happened?
September 5th, 2014 at 10:02 pm
This is one reason the housing prices have now passed the 2007 peak and rentals so expensive in the area. The recent August report breaks down the appreciation and shows more sign that we have ways to go.
October 1st, 2014 at 1:17 pm
Way to sneak that one in without directly mentioning Marin, Bob.
October 5th, 2014 at 1:28 pm
The mortgage payment on a $1m house is about 4k per month. You don’t have to be the zuckerburgs to afford that.