Middle-Wage Jobs That Have Survived, and the States That Are Fostering Them

JobGrowthbyWage.png

Middle-skill jobs are in the same camp as green jobs, STEM jobs, and other groups of occupations that garner lots of attention: They can be defined many ways, by many rubrics. Regardless of the definition, however, it’s clear that middle-skill, or middle-wage, jobs have been in decline for years.

New research from the Federal Reserve indicates the share of middle-skill jobs in the workforce has dropped from 25% in 1985 to just above 15% today, part of the hollowing-out effect that David Autor of MIT has documented. And as our chart above shows, middle-wage jobs — those that pay between $13.84 and $21.13 per hour, as defined by the National Employment Law Project — sustained much deeper cuts during the 2008-2009 recession than high- and low-wage jobs.

But not every middle-skill, middle-wage job is now extinct because of automation and offshoring. A subset of mid-wage manufacturing jobs (along with jobs in energy, health care, and other sectors) are among the healthiest post-recession occupations in the U.S. Furthermore, in a handful of states (Wyoming, Iowa, North Dakota, Michigan), mid-wage fields account for more than or close to 40% of all new jobs since 2010.

Mid-Skill or Mid-Wage?

For our analysis, we used middle-wage jobs instead of middle-skill jobs (i.e., those that require less than a bachelor’s degree but more than a high school degree). This is because some occupations that the BLS has assigned a mid level of education (e.g., registered nurses) often require a higher level of education by employers.

This methodology is similar to the one used by Autor is his 2010 study. For a brief synopsis of why Autor used wage to approximate skill, see here.

Share of New Jobs in Mid-Wage Category

In the U.S., a quarter of all new jobs since 2010 fall in the mid-wage range. That’s a slightly smaller share than high-wage jobs (29%), while almost half (46%) of new jobs have been low-wage.

ShareNewJobsbyWage

No state has stood out more than Wyoming, where 45% of new jobs since 2010 have been mid-wage — well ahead of Iowa (37%), North Dakota (36%), and Michigan (35%). Texas (25%) and California (23%) have created the most total new middle-wage jobs in the nation, but they’re in the middle of the pack in terms of the share of all new jobs.

State-MidWage-ShareAt the bottom, Rhode Island is the only state that’s lost middle-wage jobs the last few years. Coincidentally, it’s also seen a decline in high-wage jobs, meaning all of its job growth has been in occupations that pay $13.83 or lower.

Meanwhile, Mississippi (10%) and New York (13%) have the lowest share of new mid-wage jobs among states that have seen job increases.

Generally, states with higher cost of living are at the bottom in mid-wage job growth, with the exception of Mississippi. (It’s worth noting 80% of new jobs in Mississippi have been low-wage).

State Name 2013 Jobs New Jobs Since 2010 (Total) New Jobs Since 2010 (Mid-Wage) Share of New Jobs Since 2010 (Mid-Wage)
Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees & Self-Employed - EMSI 2013.3 Class of Worker
Wyoming 319,672 7,607 3,411 45%
Iowa 1,689,811 58,987 21,902 37%
North Dakota 492,918 71,607 25,970 36%
Michigan 4,391,882 214,075 74,536 35%
Arizona 2,805,158 155,430 53,115 34%
Alaska 388,436 9,790 3,296 34%
New Mexico 913,612 13,215 4,315 33%
Oklahoma 1,786,664 66,837 21,153 32%
Minnesota 3,007,618 128,418 39,433 31%
Pennsylvania 6,215,891 123,999 37,616 30%
Vermont 356,643 10,494 3,158 30%
Hawaii 742,002 27,637 8,262 30%
Kentucky 2,038,143 72,485 21,562 30%
South Carolina 2,085,991 83,597 24,601 29%
Wisconsin 2,989,657 60,737 17,661 29%
Louisiana 2,143,399 64,696 18,736 29%
Ohio 5,585,543 159,403 44,960 28%
Indiana 3,160,881 146,127 40,050 27%
Kansas 1,530,232 35,131 9,471 27%
Colorado 2,668,013 153,362 40,122 26%
Nebraska 1,059,262 28,648 7,430 26%
Texas 12,485,450 904,317 226,927 25%
Tennessee 3,061,383 144,846 34,657 24%
Utah 1,408,139 112,919 26,974 24%
California 17,523,783 913,413 208,707 23%
Massachusetts 3,679,152 149,301 33,836 23%
Oregon 1,908,085 66,034 14,817 22%
North Carolina 4,564,124 202,606 45,008 22%
Georgia 4,449,841 182,068 40,297 22%
Montana 511,880 18,730 4,122 22%
Maryland 2,881,471 103,598 22,439 22%
Nevada 1,260,218 47,951 10,160 21%
Idaho 724,549 26,236 5,250 20%
South Dakota 472,376 12,811 2,476 19%
District of Columbia 775,185 23,111 4,378 19%
Washington 3,379,817 140,985 26,352 19%
West Virginia 789,978 22,278 4,134 19%
Arkansas 1,302,641 15,044 2,652 18%
Illinois 6,243,694 178,096 30,999 17%
Missouri 2,988,014 62,799 10,803 17%
Maine 672,708 2,998 508 17%
Delaware 453,952 12,810 2,133 17%
Florida 8,370,099 373,274 61,868 17%
Alabama 2,084,701 22,075 3,605 16%
Connecticut 1,831,478 44,701 7,161 16%
Virginia 4,175,545 133,765 19,079 14%
New Jersey 4,211,361 104,096 14,478 14%
New Hampshire 702,271 13,694 1,877 14%
New York 9,602,939 325,490 43,591 13%
Mississippi 1,255,654 22,961 2,236 10%
Rhode Island 503,723 5,140 -46 -
Total 150,645,641 6,080,429 1,502,652 25%



Mid-Skill, Mid-Wage Occupations on the Rise

The list of still-vibrant middle-wage jobs is long, and most typically require on-the-job training, work experience, or short-term certificates and degrees that community colleges specialize in. This includes customer service representatives (up 6%) and heavy/tractor-trailer truck drivers (up 7%), two occupations that have each added more than 118,000 estimated jobs since the start of 2010. Both offer solid, mid-tier earnings ($14.91 and $18.14 median hourly earnings, respectively).

Other examples of strong mid-wage occupations:

  • Machinists have the best combination of total jobs added from 2010 to 2013 (nearly 50,000) and percentage job growth (14%). This occupation is just one of several on-the-rebound production fields: computer controlled machine tool operators (17% growth since 2010), welders (11%), and inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers (8%) have also performed well post-recession.
  • The fastest-growing mid-wage jobs are clustered in energy fields, specifically oil and gas: roustabouts (38% growth since 2010), oil, gas, and mining service unit operators (38%), helpers of extraction workers (28%), and extraction workers, all other (22%). Next in percentage growth since 2010 are computer controlled machine tool operators (17%).

These occupations are the cream of the crop in terms of recent job growth, and there are dozens of other viable mid-wage professions.

Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.



















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