Earnings and Average Earnings per Job

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Information System. Updated annually. http://www.bea.gov/regional/index.htm

Definitions:

Earnings cover wage and salary disbursements, supplements to wages and salaries, and proprietors' income.

• Wage and salary disbursements are defined as monetary remuneration of employees, including corporate officers; commissions, tips, and bonuses; and pay-in-kind that represents income to the recipient. They are measured before such deductions as social security contributions and union dues. All disbursements in the current period are covered. Pay-in-kind represents allowances for food, clothing, and lodging paid in kind to employees, which represent income to them, valued at the cost to the employer.
• Supplements to wages and salaries consists of employer contributions to privately administered pension and welfare funds and of employer contributions for government social insurance
• Proprietors' income is the monetary income and income in-kind of proprietorships and partnerships, including the independent professions, and of tax-exempt cooperatives.

Average earnings per job is total earnings divided by the total employment. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) employment series for states and local areas comprises estimates of the number of jobs, full-time plus part-time, at the place of work. Full-time and part-time jobs are counted at equal weight. Employees, sole proprietors, and active partners are included, but unpaid family workers and volunteers are not included.

Proprietors employment consists of the number of sole proprietorships and the number of partners in partnerships. While wage and salary workers are recorded by place of work, the proprietors employment portion of the series is more nearly by place of residence because, for nonfarm sole proprietorships, the estimates are based on IRS tax data that reflect the address from which the proprietor's individual tax return is filed, which is usually the proprietor's residence. The nonfarm partnership portion of the proprietors employment series reflects the tax-filing address of the partnership, which may be either the residence of one of the partners or the business address of the partnership.

The employment estimates are designed to be consistent with the estimates of wage and salary disbursements and proprietors' income that are part of the personal income series. The employment estimates are based on the same sets of source data as the corresponding earnings estimates and are prepared with parallel methodologies. Two forms of proprietors' income -- the income of limited partnerships and the income of tax-exempt cooperatives -- have no corresponding employment estimates.

Scope and Methodology:

BEA publishes total employment and total earnings as part of its local area estimates of personal income, a measure of the local area economies; the estimates are derived in part from the BLS data, which account for 84 percent of the wage and salary component of the personal income estimates.

The BEA employment and wage estimates differ from the BLS data because BEA adjusts the estimates to account for employment and wages not covered, or not fully covered, by the State UI and UCFE programs. First, additional source data are used to estimate most, or all, of the employment and wages for the following: Farms, farm labor contractors, private households, private elementary and secondary schools, religious membership organizations, railroads, military, and U.S. residents who are employed by international organizations and by foreign embassies and consulates in the United States. Second, employment and wage estimates are added to the BLS data to bridge small gaps in UI coverage for nonprofit organizations not participating in the UI program (several industries), for students and their spouses employed by colleges or universities (private education and State and local government), for elected officials and members of the judiciary (State and local government), for interns employed by hospitals and by social service agencies, and for insurance agents classified as statutory employees (insurance agencies). Third, the employment and wage data are adjusted for misreporting under the UI and UCFE programs.

City profiles were updated on August 7th, 2008.

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