Florida wages rise among top gains since 2019
After accounting for inflation, the average wage in the United States is around the same as it was in late 2019. However, workers in certain states have seen significantly greater salaries, particularly in picturesque places that appeal to distant workers and have labor shortages.
In Montana, for example, average income has climbed by 28.3% since before the epidemic, considerably above the about 19% national inflation rate during that time. This corresponds to an average weekly boost of $260 to $1,178. No other state experienced such a significant increase, according to a new Stateline study of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The figures are from 2023, the most recent available.
Montana has enticed remote workers with the beauty of its parks and mountains, while luring blue-collar workers with competitive compensation in more expensive areas, according to a recent article by Tim Henderson of Florida Realtors.
Other attractive locations have also attracted remote workers. These states’ average pay improved dramatically, despite the fact that some of them had historically low earnings. They include New Hampshire (28% wage increase), Florida (27.3%), Washington (27.2%), Maine (26.7%), Vermont (26.5%), Utah (25.7%), Arizona (24.8%), and West Virginia (24.6%).
Pay rose somewhat less than the 19.3% inflation rate in North Dakota (16.8%), Wyoming (17.5%), Connecticut and Michigan (18.1%), New Jersey (18.2%), Maryland and Rhode Island (18.6%), Minnesota and New York (18.9%), and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania (19%).
Nationally, inflation-adjusted salaries rose sharply early in the pandemic as low-wage service workers lost their jobs and firms competed for scarce necessary personnel. Wages continued to climb, but inflation-adjusted pay began to fall rapidly in late 2020 and 2021 as inflation took a larger bite.
The inflation-adjusted wage increase early in the pandemic was somewhat misleading, according to Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Workers’ conditions have improved slightly as the economic recovery has advanced, according to Bivens.
“On the one hand, all else equal, you’d want better wage growth over four and a half years,” according to Bivens. “On the other side, we experienced a terrible economic shock during that time. This is excellent wage performance in comparison to prior recessions and recoveries, even with inflation.”
In 2019, Montana’s average weekly wage was $918, ranking 45th among states. The most recent total, $1,178, ranks 39th. Montana’s natural beauty has enticed new inhabitants from higher-wage states such as New York and California, and many of those who work remotely have carried their better pay with them.
Montana has seen severe competition for workers, driving up pay as it has in other newly popular locations. According to Christopher Thornberg, an economist at Beacon Economics, an economic research and consulting firm that monitors Montana economic trends, those without a college education have seen the highest wage growth in Montana, as restaurants and hotels struggled to rehire staff after the peak of the pandemic.
Montana’s economy is strongly focused toward services, and salaries may fall again this year following the exceptional rise, according to Thornberg. Yet, according to him, “there’s little doubt incomes in Montana are higher than they have been in a while, even with it backing off.”
In Florida, where wages increased nearly as much as in Montana, competition for workers has driven up wages, and the unemployment rate has been lower than the national average since 2017, according to Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.
Florida, like Montana, has attracted well-paid remote workers from New York in industries such as finance, according to the bureau’s director, Christopher McCarty.
Meanwhile, earnings are stagnant in some major coastal cities that are battling to keep high-paying jobs, according to analysts.
“Coastal cities are especially struggling to add new jobs,” said August Benzow, research head for the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization. The organization examined the improved fortunes of “left-behind” communities – counties with trailing population and income growth between 2000 and 2016 – that had suffered as well-paying jobs became concentrated in metropolitan cities.
“On the plus side, left-behind counties, particularly those that are more rural, have recovered quickly. It remains to be seen whether these areas will continue to experience improved growth rates,” Benzow stated.
This article originally appeared on Florida Realtors