KEY POINTS:
At US$2821($3743) per week, people in Manhattan earned three times the average US wage in the first quarter of this year, boosted by financial sector bonuses.
Equivalent to nearly US$147,000 per year, average weekly pay for Manhattan residents shot up 16.7 per cent from the same period of 2006, maintaining its spot as the wealthiest county in the United States.
Nationally, the average rise was 5.1 per cent to US$885 per week, or US$46,000 per year, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics said.
People in Manhattan, home to Wall St, earned three to four times more than their neighbours in other New York City boroughs and almost five times more than workers in the state of Montana.
Manhattanites in the financial activities supersector made an average of US$10,156 per week, or about US$528,000 per year, largely because year-end bonuses and commissions are paid in the first quarter, the bureau said.
Manhattan far outpaced the average wage in the boroughs of Queens (US$831), the Bronx (US$788), Brooklyn (US$742) and Staten Island (US$733), partially explaining its gentrification and economic discrepancies with the rest of New York City.
After Manhattan, the country's top-ranked counties in the first quarter were Fairfield, Connecticut, a New York City suburb, at US$1979, followed by Suffolk, Massachusetts, which includes Boston, at US$1659, and San Francisco at US$1639.
Four of the 10 counties with the highest average wages were in the New York area, while three others were in and around San Francisco, near the Silicon Valley high-technology corridor.
- Reuters
