This is Research & Planning’s third release of the Customized Staffing Patterns and Wages. The initial staffing patterns were developed to assist communities, firms, educators, and counselors in identifying the labor needs and costs associated with recruiting and/or establishing new businesses. The updated staffing patterns add tools for prospective employers and job seekers to explore industry and geographic variations in employment and wages by occupation. This round, I have developed techniques whereby confidentiality issues are addressed allowing a more detailed and representative release of data than in the past.

This document begins by describes the changes between this release and the two previous versions, and introduces the three data sources used in the creation of Wyoming’s Customized Staffing Patterns and Wages 2003. An example of each table is provided with a discussion of the variable names and a question-answer format demonstrating a practical application. Lastly, the brave-hearted may review the technical documentation in Appendix IV, describing the masking procedures used to determine the level of wages disclosed and the percent distributions of employment.

The first release of staffing patterns used the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES; 750 occupations) classification and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC; 72 two digit industries) codes. The second release used the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC; 820 occupations) in place of the OES definitions and retained the two-digit SIC. The current release retains SOC for occupations and is adapted to the new industry standard, the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS; 100 three-digit industries). By changing occupational and industrial classification systems we have increased from 750 to 820 possible occupations and from 72 to 100 industries. These changes have created problems with data confidentiality and reliability by distributing employment throughout a more detailed matrix and led to the development of the masking methodology outlined in Appendix IV.

Table 1 is a brief excerpt from the full table in Appendix I and shows several variables for the occupations found in the designated industry. In this example, the industry selected (NAICS –

In Table 1 we see (referring to the Variable List) that four of the top five occupations in this industry require either Moderate or Short term On-the-Job-Training (Mod OJT, Short OJT) and one of the occupations "42-2094 – Electronic Assemblers" requires a Postsecondary vocational award. Of the occupations in this industry, General Managers earn the highest wage ($49.48/hour) followed by Sales Representatives ($39.96/hour), Electronics Repairers ($23.48/hour), and Electromechanical Assemblers ($12.55/hour). We also see the three highest paying occupations in the industry have a higher average hourly wage in Wyoming than in the US (41-4011 - Sales Representatives, 42-2094 - Electronic Repairers, and 17-2071 - Electrical Engineers).

Table 3 lists the average hourly and annual wages for the occupation "17-2071 Electrical Engineers" by state and Wyoming sub-state Region. The full Excel worksheet consists of a drop down menu to select the desired SOC & Title combination and lists the employment, wages, and ranks by state. For simplicity, several states in Table 3 were removed and only the US Total, Wyoming Border States, and Wyoming with sub-state Region appears in Table 3 (the complete table is attached in Appendix III). A review of Table 3 shows that Wyoming is ranked 33^rd nationally with an average hourly wage of $32.11/hour. Wyoming has a higher average wage than Nebraska (Rank 40, $31.25/hour), South Dakota (Rank 50, $27.28/hour), and Montana (Rank 51,

$25.91/hour) and a lower average wage than Colorado (Rank 19, $34.01/hour), Utah (Rank 14, $34.73/hour), and Idaho (Rank 13, $34.78/hour). The Cheyenne M.S.A. of Wyoming has a highest average wage for Electrical Engineers appearing in Table 3. Referring to Appendix III we see that the wage for Electrical Engineers in the Cheyenne ($37.51/hour) ranks between New Mexico (Rank = 4, $37.53/hour) and the District of Columbia (Rank = 5, $37.33/hour).