According to job site Glassdoor, the annual median base pay in the United States grew 3.0 percent year over year in March 2017 to $51,336. The Glassdoor Local Pay Reports show pay growth is up slightly from the 2.8 percent revised pay growth recorded last month, and is tied with January 2017 for the fastest pace of pay growth in the past three years. In addition to Glassdoor's personal salary tool Know Your Worth, which helps people understand their current earning potential in today's local labor market, the Glassdoor Local Pay Reports provide a unique view into the country's wage picture with salary estimates for 60 job titles across multiple industries and year-over-year pay growth trends in the United States and five major metros: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco¹.

"The positive wage growth is a sign of today's hot U.S. labor market; March's year-over-year increase shows that wages are stable and steadily increasing, especially among jobs where there is high demand for workers. The Glassdoor Local Pay Reports 3 percent wage growth matches January of this year as the fastest pace of pay increase in the three years we have recorded data," said Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor.

Houston, San Francisco Wage Growth Below National Average

Despite steady growth across the U.S., both Houston and San Francisco's wage growth rates have fallen below the national average. Houston had the slowest pay growth among the five metros, with the median base pay rising only 1.3 percent YOY to $54,435 - nearly 2 percentage points less than the national average and down more than 1 percentage point from February 2017 (2.2 percent). Houston's wage growth has decelerated in February and March so far in 2017. Houston has had below average wage growth for 15 of the past 16 consecutive months, primarily due to continued weakness in the energy sector.

San Francisco saw a slight increase from February 2017 with wage growth of 2.7 percent YOY with a median base pay of $67,032 in March, compared to 2.5 percent in the previous month.

Los Angeles' pay growth ticked up in March to 4.4 percent YOY, the fourth straight month of pay acceleration for the metro. This increase brings the median annual pay to $59,772. Chicago also saw growth in wages: median base pay rose by 3.8 percent YOY to $56,107, up slightly from the revised 3.7 percent pay growth last month.

Healthcare, Retail Jobs See Strong Pay Gains; Tech Pay Slows

The Glassdoor Local Pay Reports show strong pay gains in retail roles like store manager, which saw an increase of 7.9 percent YOY for March, which may be due to the large number of open retail jobs today -- approximately 797,600 job postings in retail are listed on Glassdoor across the U.S. Similarly, the reports show strong pay growth among warehouse associates, who are key employees for fast-growing online retail giants; median base pay for this job increased 6.3 percent to $40,390. 

Jobs in the healthcare industry experienced higher than average increases in wage growth. Emergency medical technician jobs rose 5.2 percent to a median base pay of $35,135. Registered nurse wages were also up 4.5 percent YOY in March to $66,006. Chamberlain noted the strong growth in healthcare may be due to the shortage of workers in the field -- there are more than 794,300 healthcare job openings nationally on Glassdoor -- and employers are paying more to fill these important roles.

Pay also rose significantly for recruiters, up 7.4 percent YOY in March. According to Chamberlain, "Recruiters are in high demand because unemployment is down in the U.S., at 4.7 percent we are near full employment. In this environment, employers have to rely more on passive candidates, and with fewer unemployed workers, recruiters become more important."

In addition to a slowdown of wage growth in tech-heavy San Francisco, the Glassdoor Local Pay Reports show that some tech salaries leveled off or even fell slightly YOY. For example, web developers salaries declined -0.9 percent to $61,767 nationally and -1.20 percent to $95,579 in San Francisco. Salaries for java developers remained flat nationwide at $74,520, and data scientists saw a sluggish 1.2 percent pay growth to $95,400 compared to last year.

To see the five jobs with the biggest gains and declines, visit the Glassdoor Economic Research blog. 

Highest and Lowest Paying Jobs

In addition to the biggest gains and largest declines in wage growth, the Glassdoor Local Pay Reports track the highest and lowest paying jobs each month. In March, the jobs with the nation's highest median base pay included physician ($242,235 per year), attorney ($99,758 per year), and data scientist ($95,400 per year).

The jobs with the lowest U.S. median base pay in March included cashier ($27,860 per year), bank teller ($28,409 per year) and restaurant cook ($28,792 per year).