When you find the term "average wage" in an article about economy with upbeat title, stop reading right there. Use your time for a more productive purpose or just kick back. Any measure, which ignores huge economic disparity is mostly a piece of propaganda. In a group of 10 people with one earning $10M and the rest getting less than minimum wage, everyone is a millionaire on average.<p>Unfortunately, it is so rare to see median or other asymmetric distribution sensitive concepts used in articles about economy.
>Currently, job site LinkedIn is showing that Apple has more than 500 open jobs within 50 miles of Boulder, while Google has in excess of 1,600 jobs advertised.<p>That doesn't seem accurate at all. Can anyone figure out what data they're using here? Google only shows 42 open roles in Boulder (+50 miles). Apple shows 25.<p>I think they just did a text search for Apple and Google here, but didn't filter by actual jobs listed by either...
These statistics if dominated by AMZN, MSFT, GOOGL, FB all have stocks in the past few years have been on a tear, so I’m sure RSUs have to be part of this. 280k for Seattle area is definitely not some kind of average..
This isn't going to lend much insight without a distribution by job title/seniority and compositions of the total comp. (As others have already pointed out about RSUs, bonuses, options, etc potentially playing a big part). Further, I think it would be more interesting to see measures of upward mobility given cohorts in tech vs. finance to see which presents more overall opportunity.
Can anyone explain how the US got to such ridiculously high salaries for Tech compared to most other countries? As someone working in the UK I'm more than a little jealous and tempted to try the visa gauntlet though it seems like a long shot.
> People working in the information sector in the Seattle area earn almost five times that -- King County, Washington, tech workers average $5,367 per week, or about $279,000 a year.<p>I assume wages includes equity. Otherwise, close to $300k salary for all information jobs seems high. At least, depending on what they mean by jobs in "information". The underlying data is not very specific: <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t02.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t02.htm</a>
Furthermore, you don't even need to go to a target school. Because the largest and most reputable employers in tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) have no target schools.
I wonder what's included in "financial workers". Does that include bank tellers? I get that tech is well compensated. But the banking numbers seem low considering what I've heard and seen around town.
Wow. This is journalistic malpractice. I'm pretty sure "finance" workers include everyone working for financial institutions including tellers and other low wage positions.<p>My guess is that this average has more to do with the composition of the workforce than any meaningful pay differentials in the industry.<p>So my guess is that the story here is that tech companies just have a lot fewer low wage positions, which makes sense because a lot of lower wage tech work can be outsourced abroad (e.g. customer support).