Where the best-paying jobs are: Salinas, Calif.?

The best paying jobs in the country are in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the average pay is 19% better than the national average, according to a survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The worst paying area was in the Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas metropolitan area with a pay relative of 77, meaning workers earned an average of 77 cents for every dollar earned by workers nationwide.

But let's not focus on the worst paying jobs. Instead, let's look at the some of the ones paying above the average national pay relative to 100, as defined by the BLS study. A pay relative is a calculation of pay -- wages, salaries, commissions and production bonuses. Only metropolitan areas were studied.

So for the San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland metro area in California, a pay relative of 119 means that workers there earn 19% more, or $1.19 for every dollar, than average workers across the country.

Here are the other top finishers among 77 metro areas studied, and their pay relative numbers: