By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One covered the methodology of this series. Part Two covered total employment. Part Three examined private employment. Part Four looked at establishments. Today, let’s look at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on total wages paid in the D.C. region’s ten largest jurisdictions.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program, upon which this series is based, defines wages this way:
Total compensation paid, including bonuses, stock options, severance pay, profit distributions, the cash value of meals and lodging, tips and other gratuities, and, in some states, employer contributions to certain deferred compensation plans (such as 401(k) plans), during the calendar quarter, regardless of when the services were performed.
Note that this does not include earnings of self-employed people. That is a growing part of the economy.
In this series, we use the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria CPI-W to convert nominal wages to 2024 real wages to adjust for inflation. It doesn’t make a difference to relative growth between jurisdictions because I am using the same deflator for all of them, but aww… why not?
The chart below shows MoCo’s real total wages paid since 2001, the first year in this series. The general trend is up but the pandemic definitely dented this stat.
The chart below shows one-year growth of real total wages paid in 2024 for MoCo and the other nine large jurisdictions in the region.
MoCo barely saw any growth in wages last year. Only Alexandria did worse.
The chart below shows 2024 wages as a percentage of 2019 wages. This measures the degree to which each jurisdiction has bounced back from the pandemic.
MoCo has finally recovered from the pandemic on this measure but again it trails everyone else other than Alexandria.
Finally, the chart below shows real total wages paid growth from 2007 (the year before the Great Recession) to 2024.
Once again, we are second from the bottom and badly trail the region total.
Real total wages paid resembles the data on total employment and private employment: we are seriously weak with only Alexandria doing worse. That’s not good enough. And remember – all of this predates President Donald Trump’s second term, so his current assault on the federal government cannot be blamed for this performance.
Next: real total wages paid per job.