Another day, another thing that's holding our state back.
The Wall Street Journal crunched numbers on changes in wages, county by county, throughout the U.S. between 2004 and 2013, and adjusted them for inflation. Surprise, surprise: Florida counties are lagging in terms of positive changes in average annual wages, and a vast majority of counties here have actually seen declines.
Nationally, one in three counties has seen a decline in wages. In Florida, though, average annual income has gone down in three quarters — that is, 75 percent — of its counties.
That means, when you hear politicians spout that worn-out catchphrase "jobs, jobs, jobs!" (by the way, 2010 called. It wants its tired populist rhetoric back), what they're really saying is, "jobs…jobs…jobs."
Tampa Bay Times business columnist Robert Trigaux writes, "The map is a painful reminder that Florida's fixation simply to create lots of jobs is deceptive. While it may drive down the state unemployment rate, it does so at a cost when the average wage of new jobs is lower than the jobs they replaced."
While critics of the movement to increase the minimum wage across the country will say that at least there are jobs, advocates point to the plight of the working poor. Many are trying to survive and support families on less than $10 an hour. As CL contributor Mark E. Leib expertly illustrated in a piece last month titled "Feeding Tampa Bay: The working hungry," many rely on food banks and other nonprofits for sustenance in the wake of federal cuts to food stamp programs.
There is also a cluster of counties with small increases in the central and southern part of the state, including Palm Beach, Collier, DeSoto and Highlands counties. Nestled among that cluster is Glades County, which for some reason had the highest gains, and was the only county in the state to see more than 10 percent in wage gains. There, the average salary went from $30,801 to $35,654, a 15.1 percent increase.
Miami, Broward and Monroe counties all saw declines.
Nationally, the highest wage increases are clustered in places like northeast North Dakota, unfortunately, which makes sense given the ongoing oil boom that's taking place there. (But it's still North Dakota, and we're not, so we got that goin' for us.)
Big earnings increases were also clustered in western Texas and central Wyoming (again, regions that don't scream "party").
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.