When it comes to the highest adjusted salaries across American cities, coastal areas, many of which are perceived as economic juggernauts, actually perform pretty poorly when compared to the Birmingham-Hoover metropolitan area.

According to a study posted Tuesday by Hiring Lab, the average salary in Alabama’s largest metro area goes further than any other U.S. metro area with over one million residents.

The Birmingham-Hoover metro area has an average adjusted salary of $77,000, compared to second-place Memphis at $76,800.

Sacramento, CA is the only “coastal” metro area that ranked highly, while the rest of the top ten were spread across the midwest, as well as places such as Louisville, KY, and Oklahoma City, OK.

Among larger metros, cost-of-living-adjusted salaries are highest in Birmingham, Memphis, and Cincinnati — not in the expensive coastal metros. https://t.co/IciL4UIZ7e pic.twitter.com/OaSRDGWd0n

— Jed Kolko (@JedKolko) August 27, 2019

This non-coastal advantage also somewhat holds when talking about the nation’s largest metro areas, with a subcategory showing that the five-million-person metro with the highest adjusted salaries is Atlanta at $70,600.

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Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn