As promised, here’s some local data from today’s U.S. Census Bureau report. The Center for Policy Initiatives, a local think tank for worker and labor issues, compiled this report looking at the local numbers.
Here’s a bit of CPI’s analysis on local earnings:
Among the county’s 995,021 full-time, year-round workers, the average annual earnings were $55,700. There were 214,160 full-time workers who earned less than $25,000 a year.
Across occupations, women working full-time year-round during 2006 earned 20% less than male workers.
CPI broke down the aggregate income for the county by fifths. The top fifth of households, those with the highest incomes, claimed 49 percent of the county’s income. The second fifth claimed 23 percent.
And the bottom three-fifths, or 60 percent of the county households, shared 28 percent of the county’s income among them, with the lowest fifth claiming 4 percent.
That breakdown led CPI analysts to term the local economy a “teardrop.” Among county residents reporting any income, 91 percent earn below $75,000 per year.
Last year when these Census numbers came out, CPI designated our economy an hourglass. I’ll be talking to someone from CPI later this afternoon to see how we got from an hourglass to a teardrop. Check back for more later.
In the meantime, click here to see some CPI charts of the data.