Forbes:El Paso #1 in Income growth!
December 17, 2009
NEW YORK (Forbes) – College graduates looking for higher salaries may want to consider heading out West — to West Texas, that is. El Paso topped Forbes magazine’s list of “cities where Americans are getting richer.”
According to data provided by Seattle-based Payscale, the city’s median pay has risen 19.4 percent since 2005 to $49,100. The national growth rate for pay for college graduates is 8 percent.
"Under most circumstances, it would be surprising for El Paso to rank so highly on any type of income gauge," says Tom Fullerton, economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). "But there has been some really fortunate timing in terms of expansion in the local economy."
For example, increased border patrol activity has required jobs in intelligence and other white-collar work. Also, recent expansions of both Fort Bliss and UTEP have boosted pay for educated Texans.
Payscale.com studied the compensation of college graduates for which it had data — about 1.5 million people — in the country's 100 most populous Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). It ranked MSAs on the compounded income growth between December 2005 and December 2009 to arrive at the cities where Americans are getting richer.
