The area surrounding the Beltway in Maryland is home to the highest-paid science, technology, engineering and math-related jobs in the country, according to a recent survey.
The website Smartasset.com used Bureau of Labor statistics to analyze the salaries of 40 different so-called STEM jobs in more than 400 of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. The website found that the Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick corridor had the highest average salary—$100,787—in those professions among the metropolitan areas.
That figure even outpaced Silicon Valley. The San Francisco metropolitan area—home to massive tech firms including Google and Facebook—came in second with an average salary of $100,324.
Jobs included in the survey range from computer programming and nuclear engineering to wildlife biology, but did not include health care jobs.
The study's authors attributed the local area's high salaries to the type of jobs in federal government offices in the Washington metropolitan area and a "plethora of highly-paying military contractors who create high demand for engineers, mathematicians and scientists."
Notable local employers identified by the website as contributors to the ranking include Lockheed Martin and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Rockville.
Coming in third on the list, was Washington, D.C., with an average salary in STEM positions of $98,618.
You can view the full list here.