Wage Rates for the 30 Occupations with the Highest Employment in Wyoming Compared to National Wages and the Wages of the Six Surrounding States
by: Deana Hauf, Economist

"The second highest employing occupation is general and operations managers with 5,000 jobs in Wyoming; it also has the highest wage out of these 30 occupations at $25.16 an hour."

This article identifies the 30 occupations, which account for approximately 47 percent of Wyoming’s employment in 1999, and compares their wages to the U.S. and six surrounding states, using data from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Wage Survey. A large share of the highest employing occupations in Wyoming have a low hourly wage. This is also true for surrounding states and the U.S. Table 1 shows that the average hourly wage of the 30 occupations with the highest employment (excluding the three occupations that have reported an annual wage) is $11.83. The OES program divides occupations into 22 major occupational groups. The 30 occupations with the highest employment in Wyoming represent only 10 of the 22 major groups.

Data Collection Procedures

The wage and employment¹ information in this article is based on annual results generated by the OES Wage Survey program. Each state conducts an identical wage survey under contract with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This allows for easy comparison of data between states, as well as comparisons with national figures. National wage rates and rates for each state are located on the BLS website.²

For the years 1996-1998, the survey collected data using the OES classification system. Since 1999, all Federal agencies collecting occupational data now use the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system,³ allowing occupational data to be compared across agencies. Prior to the SOC system, Federal agencies collecting occupational data used a variety of systems that were not necessarily compatible with one another. All workers are classified in one of almost 770 occupations according to their work activities. To facilitate classification, occupations are combined to reflect similar job duties, skills, education or experience.

The OES Wage Survey data presented in this article are based on either one year or three years of data (1997, 1998 and 1999). The 1997 and 1998 survey data were updated⁴ to the fourth quarter 1999 level before combining them with the 1999 survey data. As a result, one-third of the wage data in the 1999 estimates are actual, unadjusted data.

The wages used in this article represent the hourly mean wage. The mean wage, a measure of central tendency also called the arithmetic average, is the estimated total wages for an occupation divided by its weighted survey employment. The hourly wage estimates are calculated using a year-round, full-time figure of 2,080 hours per year (52 weeks times 40 hours). Occupations that typically have a work year less than 2,080 hours (for example, teachers) are reported as an annual wage. These occupations are marked with an asterisk (*) beside the occupational title in Tables 1 and 3.

Analysis of Wyoming’s Data

In the Standard Occupational Classification system, all occupations are divided into 22 major occupational groups. The 30 jobs with the highest employment in Wyoming only fall into 10 of those major groups shown in Table 2.

The 12 major occupational groups that have lesser representation in Wyoming are:
* Architecture and engineering occupations
* Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media occupations
* Business and financial operations occupations
* Computer and mathematical occupations
* Community and social services occupations
* Farming, fishing and forestry occupations
* Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations
* Legal occupations
* Life, physical and social science occupations
* Personal care and service occupations
* Production occupations
* Protective service occupations

Due to the transition from the OES to the SOC coding systems, the employment estimates are not available for 90 of the 450 occupations included in the Wyoming wage survey. The total employment for the 360 occupations that were calculated using the new system is 181,590. The total employment for the 30 jobs with the highest employment is 84,970 or approximately 47 percent of the total employment (see Table 1).

As shown in Table 1, retail salespersons have the highest employment with 7,790 and the fifth lowest wage at $7.87 an hour. The second highest employing occupation is general and operations managers with 5,000 jobs in Wyoming; it also has the highest wage out of these 30 occupations at $25.16 an hour. The third highest occupation at 4,780 is truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer. This occupation has an average wage of $13.10 an hour for Wyoming.

Comparing the National and Surrounding State Data to Wyoming

In comparing the wage of the 30 occupations with the greatest employment in Wyoming to the national wage, three occupations out of the 30 have a higher hourly wage in Wyoming than in the U.S. (see Table 3). Two of these three also have higher wages in Wyoming than in the other six states: maintenance and repair workers, general; and excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, which are mining related occupations in Wyoming.

Retail salespersons, the occupation with the greatest employment in Wyoming, reported an hourly wage of $7.87, and $9.24 at the national level—$1.37 more an hour. General and operations managers’ national wages per hour were $31.69, compared to Wyoming’s $25.16. This is a $6.53 difference, which is probably due to the large number of small businesses⁵ in Wyoming. The third largest occupation (truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer) reported $13.10 in Wyoming and $15.34 at the national level.

Two occupations (maids and housekeeping cleaners, and janitors and cleaners) have a higher hourly wage in Wyoming than in the other states, with the exception of Colorado. Colorado has only three occupations with a lower hourly wage than Wyoming.

When comparing these wages to South Dakota, 20 occupations out of the 30 have a lower wage in South Dakota than in Wyoming. There are 14 occupations in Montana and Nebraska with a lower wage, 10 in Idaho and only 6 in Utah.

¹The employment estimates for each occupation are based on the total number of employees reported as part of the Unemployment Insurance Covered Employment and Wages program.

²The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website is located at http://stats.bls.gov/.

³For more information about the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, see the website at http://stats.bls.gov/soc/soc%5Fhome.htm.

⁴For wage updating purposes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses the national wage changes from the fourth quarter of the previous year to the fourth quarter of the reference year for the nine occupational divisions for which Employment Cost Index (ECI) estimates are available. (See this website at http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/eci.toc.htm.) Such a procedure assumes that each occupation’s wage, as measured in each year, moves according to the average movement of its occupational division and that there are no major geographic or detailed occupational differences.

⁵Carol Toups, "One-Third of Wyoming Employment Found in Small Business," Wyoming Labor Force Trends, January 1996, pp. 1.

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