Last month, the American labor market entered unfamiliar territory, with job openings outnumbering seekers for the first time on record. Now workers are reaping the rewards, their salaries up 1.6% since last year. But it’s those employed in some of the nation’s most bustling metro areas who are seeing the biggest bumps—for example, New Yorkers, whose paychecks have grown 2.2% in the last 12 months, propelling more jobs into six-figure range.
“It reflects an escalation of wage pressure in the economy,” says Andrew Chamberlain, Ph.D., chief economist at Glassdoor, a job search, recruiting and insights platform. “In big, expensive metro areas like New York City, we’re likely to see strong pay growth, partially because of escalating housing costs and low unemployment rates.”
To determine the jobs paying the most in New York City, Forbes looked to Glassdoor’s June 2018 Local Pay Report. Calculated using anonymous salary data from millions of U.S. workers, the report shows annual growth in the median base salaries of 84 jobs across 15 industries. Unlike the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which estimates wages based on all forms of compensation for full-time, part-time and contract workers, Glassdoor only evaluates base pay for full-time employees. Despite differences in methodology, Chamberlain says the overarching trends reported by the BLS and Glassdoor typically align.
Claiming the No. 1 spot for the second year in a row are attorneys. The New Yorkers employed in this legal profession earn a median base pay of $128,902, up 2.2% year-over-year. While lawyers’ paychecks are known to be hefty, they do come at a cost: After seven years spent earning bachelor’s and law degrees, aspiring attorneys must pass the bar exam before entering the field, where they’ll soon find that 40-plus hour workweeks are not uncommon.
Making gains on attorneys are tax managers, rising two ranks to No. 2. These finance professionals earn a median base pay of $125,281 in New York City, up 5.7% since last year—thanks, in part, to the Trump administration’s tax reform plan. “Companies are scrambling to make the most of the changes in tax law,” says Chamberlain. “The complexity of tax law puts these workers in a strong position.” And those working as tax managers should expect to be in a strong position for a good while longer: “People expert in the field have valuable institutional knowledge,” notes Chamberlain. “It’s not a job that’s easy to automate or outsource to contractors.”
Annual median base pay growth of 3.6% was not enough for pharmacists to maintain their hold on the No. 2 spot, slipping down to No. 3, with earnings of $124,281. These health workers are the only ones from their sector to rank among those with New York City’s highest-paying jobs, a finding made even more notable by the fact that the BLS estimates that America’s 10 largest paychecks all belong to healthcare professionals. This disparity may stem from the methodology used by Glassdoor (which uses only data from full-time workers), as well as differences between the national and New York City economies.
So, if doctors and dentists aren’t banking the big bucks in New York City, who is? Primarily tech workers, such as solutions architects (No. 4), data scientists (No. 6), software engineers (No. 8) and UX designers (No. 9), who earn median base pay of $120,713, $112,252, $104,146 and $93,691, respectively. While solutions architects and software engineers experienced pay growth above that of the city’s average, data scientists and UX designers both saw sluggish raises of 0.4% and 0.5%. But this stagnation should not be seen as a sign that workers in such roles are due for a pay cut. “It’s often perceived that tech jobs are seeing the fastest pay growth,” says Chamberlain. “They’ve seen pay that’s very steadily at or above the national average, but their pay isn’t growing because their base pay is already quite high.”
While many New Yorkers do make a decent living, the city’s median base pay of $61,741 is still $7,914 away from snagging the title of highest-earning metro area, an honor that belongs to San Francisco. But if salaries continue rising as they have, it’s within the realm of possibility that New York City could catch up. “We expect the pace of wage growth to continue rising throughout 2018,” says Chamberlain. “In my opinion, this is the strongest labor market we have seen in a generation, and we’re likely to see good news for workers both in New York City and all big cities.”
