Wages, July 2008: Portland Metro Wages Were HIGHER than 51% to 96% of Other Metro Areas, Depending on Occupational Group.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data yesterday on July 2008 wage comparisons by Metro area. Data were released as "pay relatives:

"A pay relative is a calculation of pay—wages, salaries, commissions, and production bonuses—for a given metropolitan area relative to the nation as a whole. The calculation controls for differences among areas in occupational composition, establishment and occupational characteristics, and the fact that data are collected
for areas at different times during the year."

How Do Other Metro Areas Compare to Portland?
One table (HERE) shows the wages of metro areas surveyed vs. the Portland metro area, with Portland values set at 100. Values below 100 indicate that the comparison metro area had a wage LOWER than Portland, while values higher than 100 indicate that metro area had a HIGHER wage than Portland for that occupation group.

Using that table , I did an analysis of the relative wages for the Portland metro compared to 76 other metro areas.

My PDF is HERE (on pages 2-4, any metro area with wages LOWER within an occupational group than Portland is formatted with green fill).

A summary of how Portland wages compare to 76 other metro areas is the first page of the PDF, and is also pasted below.That table shows that for the "all occupation" grouping, Portland metro wages were higher than 79% of the metro areas surveyed, but for the "Mgt. Business and Financial Services" occupational grouping, Portland wages were higher than only 51% of the other metro areas surveyed:

Occupation Group	Metro Areas With Wages Lower Than Portland	% of Metro Areas With Wages Lower than Portland
All	60	79%
Mgt, Business, and Financial	39	51%
Professional and Related	48	63%
Service	63	83%
Sales and Related	67	88%
Office and Admin Support	65	86%
Construction and Extraction	68	89%
Installation, Maint, and Repair	73	96%
Production	48	63%
Transportation and Material Moving	40	53%

How Does Portland Compare to the US Average?
Another BLS table HERE sets the US value at 100, with metro area wages values shown relative to that index. Values BELOW 100 indicate that wages for a given metro were BELOW the US average,while values HIGHER than 100 were HIGHER than the US average.

This table shows that Portland wages were HIGHER than the US average for ALL occupational groupings EXCEPT for the Management, Business and Financial category.

A BLS website with a further explanation of major occupational groupings is HERE.

I encourage the addition of comments if anyone has additional perspective on this new data.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.