2011: Earnings in super-caffeinated Seattle continue to rise. With another quarterly increase at the end of 2011, wages for workers in Seattle grew to their pre-recession levels for the first time in four years and posted a solid 1.6 percent year-over-year gain. A sharp rise in Seattle wages in Q2 2011 paused in Q3. The additional lift in Q4 kept Seattle a leader in year-over-year gains among the metros tracked in The PayScale Index, at 1.6 percent.

The combination of a strong tech sector, a resurgent aircraft sector, as well as a less-damaged construction industry than is typical nationally, seemed to make Seattle the metro-to-beat in 2011.

2007-2010: The land of lattes saw stronger wage growth than the rest of the nation through 2007, with Seattleites’ earnings up more than 6 percent over 2006 by mid 2008. Wages in Seattle then largely tracked national trends, rising more slowly during the rest of 2008, falling during the first half of 2009, and staying flat through 2010.

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Popular Employers in Seattle Metro Area

• Microsoft Corp
• Amazon.com Inc
• University of Washington (UW)
• T-Mobile, Inc.
• Starbucks Corporation
• Nordstrom, Inc.
• Expedia, Inc.
• U.S. Army
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
• Paccar Corporation

Methodology for The PayScale Index: Trends in Compensation

The Seattle Metro Area includes people in Seattle, Wash.; Tacoma, Wash.; Bellevue, Wash.; Everett, Wash.; and the surrounding areas.

The PayScale Index tracks quarterly changes in total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees in the United States. In addition to a national index, it includes separate indices for specific industries, metropolitan areas, job categories, and company sizes. The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

See full methodology for compensation trend reports.