San Francisco tech workers are relatively underpaid

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 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 US mean of $22.33, as of May, 2013. That's based on the latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that break down employment by income and geography.

Some jobs here pay particularly well compared to the rest of the US -- and those that pay the most are not the ones you might think. 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 US, 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.