There are a lot of old feds that can afford the area because of how it was priced 25-40 years ago. That’s how stable some fed jobs and careers were.

Now, talking to a barista in DC and the solution is 4-5 roommates. Not unfamiliar to those in the bay area, but less upside.

One thing to remember is that federal workers tend to be older because most agencies have been encouraged to hire contractors for decades. That skews averages up towards the mid-career managers, which will seem high if you compare it to the entire job market but if you only compare them with similar private sector employees who have comparable experience and skills they’re underpaid.

Yeah, it's marginally above average for DC, but that doesn't mean they're "raking it in". The average (which is a bad metric for income) is dragged up by the wealthy in DC balancing out the poor in DC, not hordes of Federal Workers (most of whom live outside DC in Maryland/Virginia, FWIW) making $120k.

But Feds aren’t the ones earning those big salaries. They make ok money, but an engineering manager in the DC suburbs earns more.

I thought you had to realize that comparing DC to a state like California wasn't going to be an apples-to-apples comparison, which is why I wrote, "and you know it." I'm sorry for making assumptions.

You're also right, I was sloppy with my citation. I looked into the source data, and I believe Wikipedia's second table may be wrong here. Here is B19301 from the 2010 census. The Bridgeport MSA is first: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5YSPT2010.B19301?q=b19301...

Unfortunately, the table on Wikipedia is uncited (beyond the 2010 census) and was added by an anonymous IP address editor, so I don't know how they got their numbers. I'll double check my work and update the article if I don't find anything else.

Generally, though, my point is that if you compare the states and DC, you'll find that DC is an outlier on a lot of dimensions. If you compare the DC metro area with other MSAs, a lot of that exceptionalism goes away.