The difference in the cost of living from one geographic location to another is a major factor in compensation for every type of employment. Development of user assistance appears to be no exception with average annual salaries varying significantly depending on where we choose to live and work.

Two areas that host large concentrations of high technology companies, Northern California and Massachusetts, continue to provide the highest salaries. The Silicon Valley residents earn 32% more than the overall national average salary of $64,957. We received a large number of responses from California that allowed us to split the state into north and south regions. The south region encompasses the California three-digit ZIP Codes through 931, while the north starts with 940.

The states not displayed in the table did not receive enough representation to assemble reliable averages.

While the average salary for the top states is much larger than the lower states, so is the variance. Two-thirds of the respondents for the states with the highest averages have annual salaries that deviate from the average by as much as $18,000. So, for example, of the 130 Massachusetts respondents, 90 of them have an annual salary in the range of $55,000 to $91,000.

In contrast, the state of Missouri has a much tighter average. Two-thirds of the Missouri salaries are between $34,000 and $57,000. The importance of all this is to understand that the state-by-state averages only provide a guide, and very few people actually earn the average amount.

The states of Florida and North Carolina enjoyed a 20% increase over their 2001 averages. Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota enjoyed increases in the teens. Georgia, Arizona, and Utah, which had high salary growth in 2001, appear to now be experiencing some contraction.

A useful resource for comparing average salaries between regional areas is the DataMasters Cost of Living Analysis. This calculator provides cost-of-living adjustments between most major American cities.