You'll Never Guess the Richest Metros in America

San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and...Midland, Texas? The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its personal income report for 2011, naming the richest metropolitan areas in the United States by personal income per capita, and the top two spots require some explanation.

At number one, there's Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the most unequal metropolitan areas in the country. Home to both Bridgeport, the struggling industrial city, and Greenwich, the home for hedge fund billionaires on the outskirts of New York City, the metropolitan area has the nation's highest share of income earned by the top fifth. This is case where averages tell you one thing -- there are some intensely rich people living in the Bridgeport MSA -- while the median would give you a typical household income figure closer to $30,000.

Meanwhile, it's boom times in the Permian Basin, the petroleum-rich swath of western Texas, where unemployment in Midland is 3 percent and one-quarter of the labor force works in mining. If Bridgeport's top spot is a statistical glitch, Midland's second-place finish is a geological one: The small city and its large are at the mercy of their natural resources and the globally-determined price of energy.

Further down the list, we have more cities like San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, and NYC, where wages are high because productive, innovative, and well-educated people work and live there.

MORE FROM THE ATLANTIC CITIES

• America's Richest Cities, 1978 and Now
• Where the Global 1% Live
• The Vast Disposable Income Disparity Between the Rich and Poor

Top image: San Francisco. Photo by Andy Z./Shutterstock

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.