The 5 U.S. Cities With The Highest Starting Salaries

Looking for a place to kick off your career?

If you care about making money, it's worth checking out a new report from finance site WalletHub on the best and worst U.S. cities for job seekers. As part of the report, WalletHub broke out the five cities that pay the highest median starting salary. They are:

1. San Jose, Calif.: $57,108

2. Washington, D.C.: $52,344

3. San Francisco, Calif.: $49,272

4. New York, N.Y.: $48,312

5. Seattle, Wash.: $39,804

Overall, it looks like California is the place to be for entry-level workers. In addition to having two of the top five cities for starting salary, California also boasts three of the five U.S. cities with the fastest-growing workforces (Bakersfield, Calif., comes in first, while Santa Ana and Fresno claim the fourth and fifth spots).

John Kiernan, senior analyst at WalletHub, attributes the boom in California to growth in the tech industry and the Silicon Valley startup culture. He adds that California cities were hit particularly hard by the recession, meaning they now "have a lot of room for growth."

On the other hand, Kiernan cautions against putting too much stock in the starting salary figures alone. He notes that while cities like Washington, D.C., and New York may pay high wages, they also have extremely high costs of living. "In absolute terms, [these cities] pay more, but when you factor in cost of living and the real estate market, the other cities might give you more disposable income to work with," he says.

To create the ranking, WalletHub used data from the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, online job site Indeed.com, and several other governmental agencies. Click here to check out the full report online.