CA Cities With The Best Paying Jobs: U.S. News

LOS ANGELES, CA — They don't call it the Golden State for nothing. The U.S. News compilation of cities with the best-paying jobs is dominated by California communities with San Francisco at the top of the list followed by San Jose at number two. Salinas, Oxnard, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, Napa, Sacramento and Los Angeles are all among the nation's top 20 cities with the best-paying jobs.

U.S. News compiled the list by examining the annual mean salary of each job included on its 2020 Best Jobs Rankings, then tallied which cities had the most available positions associated with top-paying jobs nationwide.

San Francisco was tops with 77 available positions related to this year’s Best-Paying Jobs. San Jose had 64 jobs, Vallejo had 23, Salinas had 21, Oxnard and Sacramento each had 16, Santa Rosa had 15, Napa had 13 and Los Angeles had 12.

While it should surprise no one that LA has lots of acting jobs available and the Bay Area has no shortage of software developer and computer systems administrators openings, there are some professions included on the list that are completely unexpected. Two hot career choices for Angelenos in 2020? Midwife and cartographer, according to U.S. News. And in San Francisco, janitors, gardeners and receptionists earn decent money with salaries ranging from $36,000 to $40,000.

Here are the 21 cities that rank in the top five most frequently:

1) San Francisco, California - 77 jobs
2) San Jose, California - 64 jobs
3) New York, New York - 43
4) Bridgeport, Connecticut - 29
5) Seattle, Washington - 27
6) Vallejo, California - 23
7) Washington, D.C. - 22
8) Salinas, California - 21
9) Chicago, Illinois - 18
10) Anchorage, Alaska - 17
11) Oxnard, California - 16 (tie)
11) Sacramento, California - 16 (tie)
13) Boston, Massachusetts - 15 (tie)
13) Santa Rosa, California - 15 (tie)
15) Houston, Texas - 14 (tie)
15) Urban Honolulu, Hawaii - 14 (tie)
17) Napa, California - 13
18) Trenton, New Jersey - 12 (tie)
18) Los Angeles, California - 12 (tie)
20) Boulder, Colorado - 11 (tie)
20) Kahului, Hawaii - 11 (tie)