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Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the exact issue with BART salaries?

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Tech is a booming industry, and there aren't enough people with the skills to do the work that needs to be done so high salaries are common.

It is unclear what the supply and demand curve is for public transit employees, but it will be skewed by labor contracts. The issue is that a lot of people don't make as much as BART employees (or have nearly as good benefits). If their salaries of BART employees are higher than they could be to keep the BART running, and they can upset the lives of hundreds of thousands by striking to get even more it makes people concerned.

BART "receives 2,500 to 3,000 applicants every time it advertises for new train operators and station agents", and "gets 20,473 job applications annually for an average of 177 job openings".

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-r...

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