Wyoming Labor Force Trends
June 2024 | Volume 61, No. 6
Click Here for PDF
Return to Table of Contents
New Wyoming Residents: Where They Came From and Where They Are Working
by: Matthew Halama, Senior Economist
This article analyzes which states had individuals who relocated to Wyoming in 2023 and the industries in which they found employment. To accomplish this, Research & Planning looked at individuals who surrendered an out-of-state driver’s license and obtained a Wyoming driver’s license in 2023. Results show that the majority of those that relocated to Wyoming for employment were from Colorado, Florida, Texas, Montana, and Arizona. The top industries of employment were educational services, health care & social assistance, retail trade, accommodation & food services, and construction.
According to the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division (EAD) and population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Wyoming’s population grew by an estimated 2,428 individuals from 2022 to 2023 (Liu, 2023). Census estimates are limited in what information is available about these new residents, leaving many questions unanswered: Who are these individuals? Where did they come from? What are their demographics? Where are they working?
The research presented in this article from the Research & Planning (R&P) section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services aims to answer those questions by exploring the relationship of individuals who obtained a Wyoming driver’s license, average annual earnings from 2023, and the state in which they previously resided. This allows R&P to identify both the trends in driver’s license attainment and corresponding average annual wages for all age groups.
This article is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the methodology, namely where the data came from and how the information was collected that led to its analysis. The second section deals with the results of the data analysis, while the third part presents some conclusions.
It is important to keep in mind that this research does not include nonresidents, or individuals for whom demographic data are not available; these are typically individuals who commute to Wyoming from another state or country for work. Nonresidents also may be individuals who moved to Wyoming for work in 2023 but had not established residency by the end of the year. As noted by Moore (2024), there were 59,556 nonresidents working in Wyoming at any time during the year in 2024, accounting for 17.0% of all persons with wage records.
Methodology
According to the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT; 2024), an individual has up to one year after establishing residency to obtain a Wyoming driver’s license; in doing so, they must surrender their driver’s license from their previous state of residence. Through an agreement with WYDOT, R&P identified the individuals who obtained a Wyoming driver’s license in 2023 and surrendered their previous license. This allowed R&P to determine the states from which these new residents came. Individuals who met these criteria are identified in this article as relocatees.
Box 1: What are Wage Records?
Wage records represent an individual’s wage history based on employers’ quarterly wage and employment reports to the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax section of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. UI- covered employment represents more than 90% of Wyoming’s total wage and salary employment.
As noted by Gosar (1995):
“Wage records are an administrative database used to calculate UI benefits for employees who have been laid-off through no fault of their own. By law, each employer who has covered employees, must submit tax reports to the state showing each employee’s wage. The required information on this tax report includes social security number (SSN) for each covered employee, year, quarter, and wages earned in the quarter.”
From there, R&P linked data from the driver’s license file to its Wage Records (see Box 1) database to determine which of these individuals worked in Wyoming in 2023. R&P collects and maintains quarterly wage record data through the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system from 1992 to present, which covers approximately 92% of Wyoming jobs. Linking these administrative databases allows R&P to identify several variables such as age, gender, wages earned, the number of years and quarters worked, and more. For this article, new resident refers to individuals who surrendered an out-of-state driver’s license and obtained a Wyoming driver’s license in 2023. This article discusses relocatees with wages in Wyoming in 2023, and those who did not have wages.
More detailed methodology for the research presented in this article is available at https://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/trends/0624/a1_method.htm.
Results
In total, R&P identified 3,653 relocatees in 2023. Of those, 2,464 (67.5%) were found in Wyoming’s Wage Records database, while 1,189 (32.5%) were not (see Table 1). It is possible that individuals without wage records were working in a non UI-covered job, or were teleworking with wages in another state.
Relocatees Not Working in Wyoming
Of the 1,189 relocatees without wage records in 2023, 628 (52.8%) were men, while 561 (47.2%) were women. The average age for these relocatees was 45.0; the average age for female relocatees not working in Wyoming was 45.3, slightly higher than the average age of 44.8 for men.
The largest number of relocatees without wage records (273, or 23.0%) was in the 65 and older age group (see Table 2). These may be individuals who moved from another state to retire in Wyoming. Individuals ages 25-34 (234, or 19.7%), 35-44 (180, or 15.1%), and 45-54 (153, or 12.9%) accounted for approximately half (47.7%) of all relocatees without wage records. There were more men than women in each age group, except for the 55-64 (68 women compared to 63 men) and 35-44 (both 90) age groups.
Relocatees without wage records came from every state in the U.S., with the exception of Maine and West Virginia (see Table 3). The five states from which the most relocatees without wage records came were Colorado (144), Texas (110), Florida (102), Utah (71), and Arizona (60). Individuals age 65 and older made up the largest share of relocatees without wage records from Texas, Florida, Utah, and Arizona, while the largest group from Colorado was the 25-34 age group.
The largest groups of those without wage records were 25-34 from Colorado (34), 65 and older from Arizona (26) and Texas (25), and 20-24 from Colorado (24).
The largest age group that came from Colorado was 25-34 (34), Texas was 65+ (25), Florida was 65+ (22), Utah was both 25-34 and 65+ (15), and Arizona was 65+ (26).
Relocatees Working in Wyoming
There were 2,464 individuals who relocated from other states, obtained a Wyoming driver’s license, and had wage records in Wyoming in 2023. Of those, 1,313 (53.3%) were men and 1,151 (46.7%) were women (see Table 1). Relocatees working in Wyoming were younger (37.9) than those not working (45.0) on average. The average ages for male and female relocatees working in Wyoming in 2023 were 37.9 and 38.0, respectively.
The largest numbers of relocatees working in Wyoming were those ages 25-34 (690, or 28.0%), 35-44 (528, or 21.4%), and 20-24 (381, or 15.5%; see Table 2). When gender and demographics were combined, each age group had more men working than women, with the exception of those ages 55-64 (130 women vs. 129 men).
Every state in the U.S. was represented with relocatees working in Wyoming, with the exception of Delaware and West Virginia (see Table 3 and Figure 1). The five states with the greatest number of relocatees working in Wyoming were Colorado (325), Florida (171), Texas (157), Montana (152), and Arizona (131; see Table 3). The largest number of relocatees from Colorado were those ages 25-34 (93), 35-44 (70), and 20-24 (67). Relocatees with wage records also included those ages 25-34 from Montana (44), followed by those ages 25-34 and 35-44 from Florida (43 each).
As shown in Table 4, the industries with the largest employment were educational services (348), health care & social assistance (343), retail trade (318), accommodation & food services (292), and construction (163). The industries with the largest average annual wages were management of companies and enterprises ($93,137), utilities ($60,600), mining ($58,597), wholesale trade ($43,499), and professional, scientific, & technical services ($43,213).
Women with wage records were most often found in health care & social assistance (258), educational services (213), accommodation & food services (155), retail trade (146), and public administration (65; see Table 4). The highest paying industries for women were mining ($59,908), professional, scientific, & technical services ($40,531), and wholesale trade ($40,096).
The top five industries that employed men who re-located to Wyoming were retail trade (172), accommodation & food services (137), educational services (135), construction (135), and mining (101). The highest paying industries for men were health care & social assistance ($65,999), mining ($58,480), and information ($48,941).
Conclusions
Among relocatees to Wyoming, substantially more had wage records than not (see Figure 2). For most age groups, roughly seven of every 10 had wage records in Wyoming, while three did not. The opposite was true for relocatees ages 65 and older, where nearly seven of every 10 (67.1%) did not have wage records in Wyoming. This supports the idea that older individuals may have re-located to Wyoming to retire.
Male and female relocatees often were found in different industries, though a substantial number of both were found in educational services, accommodation & food services, and retail trade. Male relocatees often were found in industries like construction and mining, while female relocatees had wages in health care & social assistance and public administration. The industries with the highest average annual wages for relocatees to Wyoming were management of companies & enterprises ($93,137), utilities ($60,600), mining ($58,597), wholesale trade ($43,499), and professional, scientific, & technical services ($43,213).
In 2023, the top five states from which individuals re-located, obtained a Wyoming driver’s license, and found employment in Wyoming were Colorado, Florida, Texas, Montana, and Arizona. This indicates that while some re-location is a function of proximity (such as relocatees from Colorado and Montana), relocatees also move to Wyoming for other reasons.
As shown in Table 5, four industries appeared in the top five industries with the greatest number of relocatees for each of those states: retail trade, educational services, health care & social assistance, and accommodation & food services. Of those four industries, the highest average annual wages were typically found in health care & social assistance. This could be an indication Wyoming is attracting health care workers from other states due to higher wages. This idea is supported by earlier research by R&P, which demonstrated that many health care-related occupations had higher wages in Wyoming than most surrounding states (Glover and Moore, 2019).
In contrast, industries such as retail trade and accommodation & food services had much lower wages. Wyoming has an abundance of jobs in these industries (Research & Planning, 2024), so individuals looking to move to Wyoming may have taken a job in one of these industries while searching for more lucrative opportunities. It is also possible that individuals working in these industries may have moved to Wyoming with a spouse or other family member who worked in a higher-paying industry, such as mining or construction.
Future articles could expand on this research by looking beyond 2023, and perhaps identify the differences in relocatees in times of economic booms compared to economic downturns.
References
Glover, T., and Moore, M. (2019). Health care workforce needs in Wyoming. Research & Planning, Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. Retrieved May 31, 2024, from https://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/health.htm
Gosar, W. (1995). Wyoming unemployment insurance wage record summary statistics — a new way to look at Wyoming. Wyoming Labor Force Trends, 32(5). Research & Planning, Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. Retrieved May 31, 2024, from http://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/0595/0595a2.htm
Liu, W. (2023, December 19). Wyoming's population continues to increase. Wyoming Administration & Information, Economic Analysis Division. Retrieved March 15, 2024, from http://eadiv.state.wy.us/pop/ST-23est.pdf
Moore, M. (2024; in press). Chapter 6: Demographics of the workforce – Wyoming sees continued decline in resident workers in 2023. 2024 Wyoming Workforce Annual Report. Research & Planning, Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.
Research & Planning. (2024, May). Wyoming Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages summary statistics by industry, 2001-2023. Retrieved May 31, 2024, from https://doe.state.wy.us/lmi/QCEW_OTY/toc.htm
Wyoming Department of Transportation. (2024). Driver license. Retrieved May 31, 2024, from https://www.dot.state.wy.us/home/driver_license_records/driver-license.html
.
Hire Wyo
