Last week, the Maryland Comptroller’s Office released preliminary data indicating that local income tax collections are not keeping pace with job growth, in part because most of the new jobs created pay well below average wages. Since then, economist Richard Florida reported in Route Fifty that this trend appears nationwide.
The good news for this Labor Day weekend is that America is producing jobs. The bad news is that lots of them are low-wage jobs, and most of them are concentrated in a relatively small number of metro areas.
The U.S. economy added nearly 12.2 million jobs between 2011-2016, and high-wage jobs make up the largest number of total jobs at 37 percent of the overall U.S. job market. However, low wage jobs – those that pay $13.83 an hour or less – account for the largest increase in new jobs during those four years.
Overall, the Boston-New York-Washington Corridor has fared well in comparison to the rest of the country in high wage job concentration, as tech and knowledge hubs become increasingly valuable.