How Salinas, Calif. leads the nation in well-paying jobs

Packing up and moving like the Joads did in "The Grapes of Wrath" might not be in your plans if you're searching for work, but you couldn't do worse than where the Joads ended up -- Salinas, Calif.

As I recently wrote for WalletPop, Salinas is first or second in pay nationwide in five of nine major occupational groups surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I've been through Salinas. And while it's beautiful and was where John Steinbeck wrote, I couldn't see how such a city in the Central Valley of California could lead metropolitan areas in the United States for well paying jobs. So, being the inquisitive reporter I am, I called a few people in Salinas to get some answers.

"Anyone who's looking to head West ought to look closely at us," Mayor Dennis Donohue told me.

Salinas is worth a closer look with such high scores in so many areas of the study. The national average for pay in the study is 100, so a city with a score of 129, for example, pays 29% better than the average U.S. city. Or another way to look at it is that workers there earn $1.29 for every $1 earned on average nationwide.