Average Silicon Valley Salary Tops $100,000

While many other industries are struggling, the tech sector apparently isn't one of them. The average salary for Silicon Valley jobs has crossed the $100,000 mark for the first time, a survey has found.

According to Dice Holdings, which has been conducting an annual salary survey since 2001, tech professionals saw their biggest boost in wages since 2008, after about two years where pay was basically static. In 2011, the tech industry earned average salary increases of more than 2 percent, up from $79,384 in 2010 to $81,327.

Bonuses also climbed 8 percent to hit an average of $8,769. Dice also said more people are receiving these perks; last year, 32 percent were paid bonuses, an increase from 29 percent in 2010 and 24 percent in 2009.

Tech salaries in Silicon Valley soared 5 percent to hit $104,195. Bonuses are bigger and more common in the Valley as well, with 38 percent of professionals paid average bonuses of $12,450, Dice said.

But Silicon Valley isn't the only place where people are earning fat salaries in the tech industry: Austin saw a 13 percent bump in pay, to reach an average salary of $89,419; followed by Portland, which saw a 12 percent boost to $82,055; then Houston, where pay increased 7 percent to $89,307; and Washington, D.C., which had 6 percent growth to $94,317.

"Compensation has mustered some momentum, as more and more top tech markets are notching increases in pay," said Tom Silver, Dice's senior vice president of North America. "Silicon Valley's compensation moved first and wrote the playbook for highly qualified tech professionals to ask for more."

Other cities where pay for tech jobs increased included Chicago and Seattle (up 5 percent), Dallas (4 percent), and New York, L.A., and Raleigh (3 percent).

Google, one very notable tech company, topped Fortune's annual list of the , for reasons such as increases in revenue, profits, hiring, and job growth rate (33 percent).

Additionally, the highest paid CEO in the U.S. heads up a tech company. Apple recently reported that Tim Cook's total pay package is .