I would imagine that everyone has seen the latest high tech wage data for Idaho released by the American Electronics Association last week.
The report cites wage data for 2006. I’ve written plenty of stories about this data while at the Statesman and when I was at Commerce & Labor the data was a key part of our marketing effort.
But I have to admit it. I don’t like this statistic and I think it’s fundamentally flawed. It paints a way too rosy picture of our tech industry.
What has always concerned me is the implication that those type of wages are being paid to all of Idaho’s tech workers. Now that may be the case at HP and other companies, but it’s certainly not the case at mainly manufacturing companies like Micron.
I’ve met very few Micron employees who even come close to that average. And I know for a fact that back when Micron was hiring for entry level positions, the company wasn’t paying much more than most call centers.
There are a number of reasons I don’t like this statistic.
First of all, you just have to question how accurate the data is given that the survey says that the bulk of Idaho’s high tech jobs are manufacturing jobs. The survey said 14,800 of the 20,848 tech jobs were manufacturing jobs.
I think the stat in many ways hurts our efforts to grow tech. On the face it looks like we have nearly 15,000 manufacturing jobs that pay those type of wages.
The reality is that those manufacturing jobs aren’t anywhere near the average. When Micron laid off so many employees last summer, I spoke to a few employees who had been with the company for 15 to 20 years and they were only making about $50,000.
On paper, the average wage sounds great, but let’s remember it’s just an average. I would like to see the underlying data that created the average. We have such a small pool of tech workers that it only takes a small percentage of very high paying tech jobs to distort reality.
We need high paying jobs, and I believe tech is one of the few industries that will provide high-paying jobs. But, we need to make it clear that the bulk of Idaho’s so-called tech workers are actually manufacturing workers and they aren’t making anything to close to that average.
So let’s not get too comfortable thinking we have such a vibrant tech industry.
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Ken - you nailed it. We all need to be very careful. For example, what is defined as “high tech” is a little tricky; what is “manufacturing” likewise. The regional economists over at Labor can tell how hard it is to get the numbers even remotely comparable. Maybe you get someone like Janelle Hyer to comment here???
Trend data might be useful, but I keep seeing that “2006″ data which might even mean closer to 2005? If you look at all the rankings & ratings, you’ll see aged data like this. Most of the data becomes concurrent indicators at best (and maybe even lagging indicators) - very few are out there developing genuine leading indicators (Michigan did a great job, but didn’t listen to it, LOL)
Tac wrote about this a year ago in Idaho IQ; I can’t find a link to it, but here’s a follow-on: http://tinyurl.com/2wv3ao
Maybe this might be a good forum topic?? Michigan identified indicators that seemed to be predictive, then analyzed all the numbers, the good & the bad to see what directions they were going. I’ve got their data (has all 50 states).
It would be a good idea to have the median as well as just the average income; that would be more helpful and would eliminate outliers.
There’s a number of different sets of indicators; here’s one I know of:
http://www.kauffman.org/pdf/2007_State_Index.pdf