John Shinal

Special for USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Bay Area residents born and raised on the East Coast (or anywhere else outside the region) often hear the same question repeatedly from friends and family: Why would anyone live where it's so expensive?

The question is usually followed by other inquiries that cast similar doubt upon the sanity of anyone who chooses to live within an hour's drive of the bay.

Ones like: "Aren't you afraid of the earthquakes?"

As I traveled to the Sonoma County wine country over the July 4th weekend, one of my auto companions showed me the text she'd received that morning from her mother back home in the suburbs of Northern New Jersey.

"Did you see there's a fire in Napa? Isn't that close to Sonoma?"

Yes it is! Yet on we drove, undaunted and – as some of my own relatives back east might say – foolishly heedless of our peril.

Good thing a lot of the jobs here pay well.

Along with the mild weather and cultural diversity – which tends to keep human boredom at bay – perhaps the greatest attraction of this area is its abundance of high-paying jobs.

The latest figures available from the federal government show just well workers in the city and its closest environs are doing.

The average worker in the San Francisco – San Mateo – Redwood City metro area was paid a mean hourly wage of $32.41, or 45 percent higher than the U.S. mean of $22.33, as of May, 2013.

That's based on the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that break down employment by income and geography.

Some jobs here pay particularly well compared to the rest of the U.S. – and those that pay the most are not the ones you might think.

At first glance, it's easy to say that the hiring of well-paid engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists and other workers by the area's technology companies is the driving force behind the area's affluence.

Indeed, the San Francisco metro area had just over 68,800 tech jobs as of 14 months ago.

That's 6.6 percent of total jobs – more than double the ratio for the entire U.S., where only 2.8 percent of all employment is in tech.

But a closer look at the numbers shows that tech workers are far from being the best-paid here, relative to the average American, compared to other professions.

For example, health care workers (in several categories), lawyers and sales people in San Francisco are all paid more than 40 percent higher than the national average, while tech workers are paid 27 percent more.

Granted, that comparison is skewed a bit because many of those workers in sales also work for tech companies.

Yet those who work in fishing, farming, forestry and protective services are also doing better than tech workers when compared to national numbers.

The numbers suggest at least two things.

The first is that the tech workers who ride luxury commuter buses to work – making them the most-visible sign of the area's income divide – might not be the most appropriate target for the anti-eviction protesters and community activists who've staged demonstrations against them.

But who wants to start harassing doctors, lawyers, security guards or forest rangers?

And second, while those trained in science, engineering, math and other technical fields might seem the most likely candidates to move to San Francisco, newly-minted college grads in other fields – upon looking at these numbers – might have an even better argument for coming here.

That's because jobs in more than half a dozen other fields – while lacking the perks lavished on tech workers – pay even better here.

John Shinal has covered tech and financial markets for more than 15 years at Bloomberg, BusinessWeek,The San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal Digital Network and others. Follow him on Twitter: @johnshinal.