Pacific Daily News, GU
10-30-06
Best-paid jobs hinge on area
By Brian Tumulty
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON -- Want to be among the best-paid nurses in the country? Move
to San Jose, Calif., and make $87,950 a year.
Prefer to work as a correctional officer? You might try Vineland, N.J.
What if professional dancing is your gig? The top money is in Vegas.
That's where the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports those occupations received
the highest average pay last year.
The data, in fact, covers about 800 occupations and more than 400 metropolitan
areas. It's available for free on the Internet at the BLS Web site for Occupational
Employment Statistics (www.bls.gov/oes).
So if you are a bartender or electrician looking to relocate where the pay is
better, is this information useful?
''I think for cities of, let's say, over a couple of hundred thousand, the numbers
are likely to be very reliable,'' said Peter Orazem, an economics professor at
Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
However, in Orazem's hometown of Ames -- one of the nation's smallest
metropolitan statistical areas -- the information can be unreliable and needs to be
compared with salaries statewide or in larger metro areas within the same state.
In the case of San Jose area nurses, there's lots of evidence pay levels are either
the highest in the nation or close to it. California nurses are higher paid than their
counterparts in other states and the California Nurses Association, which
represents most nurses in the area, says salaries are higher than in Southern
California.
Cost of living
Beverly Elemen is a nurse practitioner from San Jose who earns $60 an hour
under a contract the union has with Kaiser Permanente.
"I feel like I am well compensated,'' said Elemen, who chooses to work 32 hours
a week -- less than full-time -- and grosses over $99,000 annually.
As a nurse practitioner, she earns more than a registered nurse. A registered
nurse with five years experience earns $96,928 annually for a 40-hour week.
Next year, that increases to $102,731 under a new contract not yet ratified by the
nurses' union.
But Elemen also lives in an area with high housing costs. Homes in her
neighborhood sell for $650,000 and none of her three grown children can afford a
single-family home in San Jose.
''I feel like there sometimes is a price to pay for where we choose to live,'' said
Elemen, 55. "The price of housing is one of the crosses you have to bear.''
The San Jose area also provides the top annual pay for chief executives
($179,720) and stonemasons ($61,520).
In fact, northern California metropolitan areas rank among the highest paying
areas nationally for a significant number of occupations.
Just graduated from technical school as a certified auto mechanic? The San
Francisco area paid the top annual average last year of just over $50,000.
Want to be a firefighter? The Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, Calif., metro area led
the nation at $77,100.
Charles Garcia, president of IAFF Local 55 representing firefighters in Oakland
and two neighboring cities, said the applicants for the Oakland Fire Department
come from as far away as Oklahoma to take the exam.
Housing costs are not as high in southern New Jersey, where the BLS estimates
the average correctional officer in the largely rural Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton
metropolitan area earned the highest pay in the nation last year -- $58,600. The
area has several state prisons, including the 3,300-inmate South Woods State
Prison. Statewide, correctional officers averaged $54,800 last year.
''You are walking in off the street making $50,000 without a college degree if you
pass the test and go through the academy,'' said Joseph Malagrino, president of
PBA Local 105 which represents 6,000 New Jersey state correctional officers.
"But you are getting paid for the risks.''
The last time he checked, Malagrino said the waiting list for job openings had
20,000 applicants.
The current top annual salary of $70,480 for a New Jersey correctional officer
with 12 1/2 years experience will increase to $72,136 on Dec. 23.
Wanna be a singer?
Does your little girl or boy hope someday to be a musician or singer?
The federal government counted 50,410 Americans who were employed on a
business's payroll as a musician or singer last year. Almost 30,000 of them
worked for performing arts companies at an average wage of $25.89 an hour.
But the 900 musicians and singers who lived in the Seattle metropolitan area
made considerably more, an average of $44.78 an hour.
The government database doesn't keep track of earnings among the selfemployed.
Even so, it does highlight how workers in many occupations are paid
considerably more in some places than in others.
Bill Raabe, director of collective bargaining for the 3.2 million-member National
Education Association, says that's long been the case for teachers.
For example, the NEA says the starting salary for a teacher in North Dakota
averaged $24,035 last year, compared to $40,300 in New Jersey.
Nationwide, teachers of all experience levels are paid an average of $47,000,
according to the NEA.
According to the BLS, the highest average salary of a kindergarten teacher was
$69,420 in Nassau and Suffolk counties of New York's Long Island.