Washington, D.C., has dethroned Silicon Valley to become No. 1 in median income in the country. Last year, the national median was $50,046, while the Washington metro area hit $84,523.
“You’ve just got to look at the employment base here,” said James Chung, the president of Reach Advisors, a strategy and research firm that studies demographic and economic data in metropolitan areas. “What you find is that Washington, D.C., has a higher percentage of a professional work force than almost any other city in America and that’s because the business of D.C. is government,” he said.
Of almost 3 million total jobs in the region, about 380,300, or 13 percent, were in the federal government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The compensation for those workers, including health care and other benefits, was more than $126,000, according to Bloomberg’s calculations.
Richard Florida has some excellent analysis of the changes in per capita income. Read it at The Atlantic Cities
