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Bay Area Workers Earning Nearly 50 Percent More Than Average U.S. Employee

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- San Francisco-area workers earn around 47 percent more than the U.S. average, according to statistics released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the census area incorporating San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties, workers earned an average of $33.34 an hour as of May 2014, or around 47 percent above the U.S. average of $22.71, bureau officials said day.

Workers in the area were significantly more concentrated than the U.S. as a whole in professional areas including computers and mathematics, management, business and finance, science, law, education and training and art and design, the data showed.

Other areas had a relatively small percentage of workers compared to the national average, including production, healthcare, transportation and material moving.

In computers and technology, which accounted for 6.8 percent of local employment, local workers earned an average of $51.44, well above the national average for the field of $40.37.

However the highest earning areas were management, with an average

hourly wage of $72.45 in the San Francisco area, and law, with an average

hourly wage of $62.78

Office and administrative support was the largest employment sector in the Bay Area, representing 15.4 percent of all workers and an average wage of $22.62.

The figures released Tuesday were collected in a twice-yearly survey of employers known as the Occupational Employment Statistics survey.

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