General Information: (312) 353-1880 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Paul LaPorte Tuesday, November 13, 2007 (312) 353 -1138 www.bls.gov/ro5 www.bls.gov/oes 2006 Detailed Data Tables OCCUPATIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL-BLOOMINGTON, MN-WI MAY 2006 Workers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota- Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area1 had an average (mean) wage of $21.63 per hour during May 2006 compared to the nationwide average of $18.84, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Regional Commissioner Jay A. Mousa noted that after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were measurably higher in 15 of the 22 major occupational groups and lower in two others. In addition, when compared to the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in 10 of the 22 occupational groups, including five of the better paid-management; legal; computer and mathematical; architecture and engineering; and life, physical and social science. These statistics are from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, a federal-state cooperative program between BLS and State Workforce Agencies, in this case the Minnesota Department of Employment Security. The OES survey provides estimates of employment and hourly and annual wages for wage and salary workers in 22 major occupational groups and up to 801 non-military detailed occupations for the nation, states, and 409 metropolitan areas, including Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota-Wisconsin. Occupational wages in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington area Management and legal occupations were the two highest-paid occupational groups in the Minneapolis area in May 2006, with those in management averaging $49.21 an hour and those in legal occupations, $44.00. (See table A.) Nationwide, these were also the two highest-paying groups, with earnings of $44.20 in management and $41.04 in legal occupations.
Table A. Occupational employment and wages by major occupational group, United States and Minneapolis metropolitan area, and measures of statistical significance, May 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Employment share | Average (mean) | (percent of total) | hourly wage Major occupational group |--------------------------|------------------------ |United |Minneap-|Statis- |United |Minneap-|Statis- |States |olis |tically |States |olis |tically | | |signif- | | |signif- | | |icant1 | | |icant1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Management 4.4 5.6 Yes $44.20 $49.21 Yes Business and financial operations 4.4 6.5 Yes 28.85 28.48 No Computer and mathematical 2.3 3.5 Yes 33.29 33.68 No Architecture and engineering 1.8 2.2 Yes 31.82 30.71 Yes Life, physical, and social science .9 1.2 Yes 28.68 30.51 Yes Community and social services 1.3 1.6 Yes 18.75 19.51 No Legal .7 .8 Yes 41.04 44.00 No Education, training, and library 6.2 5.2 Yes 21.79 21.06 Yes Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media 1.3 1.5 Yes 22.17 23.69 Yes Healthcare practitioner and technical 5.1 4.8 No 29.82 34.26 Yes Healthcare support 2.6 2.4 Yes 11.83 13.72 Yes Protective service 2.3 1.7 Yes 17.81 18.15 No Food preparation and serving related 8.3 8.0 Yes 8.86 9.72 Yes Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance 3.3 2.8 Yes 10.86 12.19 Yes Personal care and service 2.5 3.1 Yes 11.02 12.07 Yes Sales and related 10.6 10.9 Yes 16.52 19.64 Yes Office and administrative support 17.4 16.8 Yes 14.60 16.13 Yes Farming, fishing, and forestry .3 .1 Yes 10.49 12.46 Yes Construction and extraction 5.0 4.1 Yes 18.89 24.98 Yes Installation, maintenance, and repair 4.0 3.2 Yes 18.78 21.66 Yes Production 7.7 8.0 No 14.65 16.54 Yes Transportation and material moving 7.3 6.2 Yes 14.16 16.70 Yes --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Statistical significance testing at the 90-percent confidence level.
The average wage for workers in management occupations in the Minneapolis area was significantly above that for the nation. Locally, hourly wages varied widely within this group. At $82.98 an hour, chief executives were at the higher end of the pay scale, while several occupations had hourly rates in the $50.00 range, including sales, marketing, financial, and training and development managers. Three management occupations had rates under $25.00 (education administrators, preschool and child care center/program; food service; and lodging managers). (Detailed occupational data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_33460.htm.) Within the legal occupational group in Minneapolis, lawyers were among the higher paid occupations at $57.29 an hour, while law clerks were at the lower end of the wage scale, averaging $20.58 an hour. At $34.26, the average wage for the healthcare practitioner and technical occupational group in the Minneapolis area was significantly above the national average of $29.82. Locally, within this group, anesthesiologists, orthodontists, family and general practitioners, and general dentists had among the highest average hourly earnings. Pay for these occupations was greater than $60.00 an hour. At the other end of the spectrum, hourly earnings averaged $20.00 or less for pharmacy technicians, medical records and health information technicians, and licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses. Other occupational groups in the Minneapolis area with pay levels above $30.00 per hour were computer and mathematical; architecture and engineering; and life, physical, and social science. Of these three, only the life, physical, and social science occupational group had wages significantly above the national average - $30.51 locally vs. $28.68 nationally. In the Twin Cities area, physicists, materials scientists, and food scientists and technologists were among the better paid within this group. Local construction and extraction workers earned 32 percent more than their national counterparts. In Minneapolis, construction workers earned $24.98 an hour on average, significantly more than the $18.89 paid nationwide. Five of the higher-paying jobs in this occupational group averaged more than $30.00 an hour--mechanical insulation workers; first-line supervisors/managers of construction trades and extraction workers; elevator installers and repairers; drywall and ceiling tile installers; and structural iron and steel workers. One of the lower-paying jobs in this group was carpenter helpers, which had an average wage of $12.70 per hour. Food preparation and serving related workers were the lowest- paid occupational group in Minneapolis at $9.72 an hour; still, this wage was significantly above the national average of $8.86. Within this group, chefs and head cooks were among the highest paid occupations at $18.71 an hour. Seven occupations averaged from $8.00 to $9.00 an hour, including dishwashers ($8.58) and fast food cooks ($8.57). Occupational employment in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington area Office and administrative support was the largest major occupational group in the Minneapolis area, with 297,430 workers representing 16.8 percent of area employment. (See table A.) However, the share of workers in this occupational group locally was significantly below the U.S. average of 17.4 percent; nationally, this was also the largest occupational group. In the Minneapolis metropolitan area, general office clerks (44,890), customer service representatives (29,140), and stock clerks and order fillers (24,510) were among the largest office and administrative support occupations. (Detailed occupational data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_33460.htm.) Sales and related workers represented the second largest major occupational group with a 10.9-percent share of the local workforce compared with 10.6 percent nationwide. The relatively low-paid positions of retail salespersons ($11.64) and cashiers ($9.25) accounted for nearly one-half of local employment in this group, with 52,740 and 39,050 workers, respectively. However, one sales occupation in Minneapolis-St. Paul, wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives (except technical and scientific products), accounted for 13 percent of employment and had earnings approaching $32.00 an hour. Two major occupational groups in the Minneapolis area had employment concentrations of 8 percent-production occupations and food preparation and serving related occupations. The production group's local employment share was above its national share of 7.7 percent. Team assemblers, with 22,360 workers, was one of the largest production occupations. Within the food preparation and serving related group, two jobs accounted for nearly half of local employment--combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food (38,120) and waiters and waitresses (31,950). Local pay levels for both production workers ($16.54) and food preparation and serving related workers ($9.72) were significantly higher than the national averages of $14.65 and $8.86, respectively. ______________________________________________________________ 1 The Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is composed of Anoka, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Isanti, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne, Washington and Wright Counties in Minnesota, and Pierce and St. Croix Counties in Wisconsin. Minneapolis, the Minneapolis metropolitan area, Twin Cities, and other such abbreviations are used interchangeably to refer to the officially designated MSA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- The OES wage and employment data for the 22 major occupational groups in the Minneapolis metropolitan area were compared to their respective national averages based on statistical significance testing. Only those occupations with wages or employment shares above or below the national wage or share after testing for significance at the 90 percent confidence level meet the criteria. NOTE: A value that is statistically different from another does not necessarily mean that the difference has economic or practical significance. Statistical significance is concerned with the ability to make confident statements about a universe based on a sample. It is entirely possible that a large difference between two values is not significantly different statistically, while a small difference is, since both the size and heterogeneity of the sample affect the relative error of the data being tested. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical Note The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey is a semiannual mail survey measuring occupational employment and wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments in the United States. Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands also are surveyed, but their data are not included in this release. OES estimates are constructed from a sample of about 1.2 million establishments. Forms are mailed to approximately 200,000 establishments in May and November of each year for a 3-year period. The nationwide response rate for the May 2006 survey was 78.1 percent based on establishments and 73.4 percent based on employment. The survey included establishments sampled in the May 2006, November 2005, May 2005, November 2004, May 2004, and November 2003 semiannual panels. The sample in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area included 11,674 establishments with a response rate of 76 percent. The occupational coding system The OES survey uses the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) occupational classification system, the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The SOC system is the first OMB- required occupational classification system for federal agencies. The OES survey categorizes workers in 1 of 801 detailed occupations. Together, these detailed occupations make up 23 major occupational groups, 22 of which are covered in this release. The one exception is military specific occupations which are not included in the OES survey. For more information about the SOC system, please see the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Web site at http://www.bls.gov/soc/. The industry coding system The OES survey uses the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). For more information about NAICS, see the BLS Web site at http://www.bls.gov/bls/naics.htm. Survey sample BLS funds the survey and provides the procedures and technical support, while the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) collect most of the data. BLS produces cross-industry and industry-specific estimates for the nation, states, and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Industry-specific estimates are produced at the NAICS sector, 3-digit, 4-digit, and selected 5-digit industry levels. BLS releases all cross-industry and national estimates; the SWAs release industry-specific estimates at the state and MSA levels. State Unemployment Insurance (UI) files provide the universe from which the OES survey draws its sample. Employment benchmarks are obtained from reports submitted by employers to the UI program. The OES survey sample is stratified by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas and industry. Samples selected in panels prior to May 2005 were stratified using MSA definitions based on the 1990 Metropolitan Statistical Area standards. Beginning with the May 2005 panel, the sample was stratified using new MSA definitions based on the 2000 Metropolitan Statistical Area standards. Concepts Occupational employment is the estimate of total wage and salary employment in an occupation across the industries surveyed. The OES survey defines employment as the number of workers who can be classified as full- or part-time employees, including workers on paid vacations or other types of paid leave; workers on unpaid short-term absences; salaried officers, executives, and staff members of incorporated firms; employees temporarily assigned to other units; and employees for whom the reporting unit is their permanent duty station regardless of whether that unit prepares their paycheck. Wages for the OES survey are straight-time, gross pay, exclusive of premium pay. Base rate, cost-of-living allowances, guaranteed pay, hazardous-duty pay, incentive pay including commissions and production bonuses, tips, and on-call pay are included. Excluded are: back pay, jury duty pay, overtime pay, severance pay, shift differentials, non-production bonuses, employer cost for supplementary benefits, and tuition reimbursements. Mean hourly wage. The mean hourly wage rate for an occupation is the total wages that all workers in the occupation earn in an hour divided by the total employment of the occupation. To calculate the mean hourly wage of each occupation, total weighted hourly wages are summed across all intervals and divided by the occupation's weighted survey employment. The mean wage for each interval is based on occupational wage data collected by the BLS Office of Compensation and Working Conditions for the National Compensation Survey (NCS). Annual wage. Many employees are paid at an hourly rate by their employers and may work more than or less than 40 hours per week. Annual wage estimates for most occupations in this release are calculated by multiplying the mean hourly wage by a "year-round, full- time" figure of 2,080 hours (52 weeks by 40 hours). Thus, annual wage estimates may not represent the actual annual pay received by the employee if they work more or less than 2,080 hours per year. Some workers typically work less than full time, year round. For these occupations, the OES survey collects and reports either the annual salary or the hourly wage rate, depending on how the occupation is typically paid, but not both. For example, teachers, flight attendants, and pilots may be paid an annual salary, but do not work the usual 2,080 hours per year. In this case, an annual salary is reported. Other workers, such as entertainment workers are paid hourly rates, but generally do not work full time, year round. For these workers, only an hourly wage is reported. Hourly versus annual wage reporting. For each occupation, respondents are asked to report the number of employees paid within specific wage intervals. The intervals are defined both as hourly rates and the corresponding annual rates, where the annual rate for an occupation is calculated by multiplying the hourly wage rate by a typical work year of 2,080 hours. The responding establishment can reference either the hourly or the annual rate for full-time workers, but they are instructed to report the hourly rate for part-time workers. Estimation methodology Each OES panel includes approximately 200,000 establishments. The OES survey is designed to produce estimates using six panels (3 years) of data. The full six-panel sample of 1.2 million establishments allows the production of estimates at detailed levels of geography, industry, and occupation. Wage updating. Significant reductions in sampling errors are obtained by combining six panels of data, particularly for small geographic areas and occupations. Wages for the current panel need no adjustment. However, wages in the five previous panels need to be updated to the current panel's reference period. The OES program uses the BLS Employment Cost Index (ECI) to adjust survey data from prior panels before combining them with the current panel's data. The wage updating procedure adjusts each detailed occupation's wage rate, as measured in the earlier panel, according to the average movement of its broader occupational division. The procedure assumes that there are no major differences by geography, industry, or detailed occupation within the occupational division. May 2006 OES survey estimates. The May 2006 OES survey estimates are based on all data collected from establishments in the May 2006, November 2005, May 2005, November 2004, May 2004, and November 2003 semiannual samples. Reliability of the estimates. Estimates calculated from a sample survey are subject to two types of error: sampling and nonsampling. Sampling error occurs when estimates are calculated from a subset (that is, a sample) of the population instead of the full population. When a sample of the population is surveyed, there is a chance that the sample estimate of the characteristic of interest may differ from the population value of that characteristic. Differences between the sample estimate and the population value will vary depending on the sample selected. This variability can be estimated by calculating the standard error (SE) of the sample estimate. If we were to repeat the sampling and estimation process countless times using the same survey design, approximately 90 percent of the intervals created by adding and subtracting 1.645 SEs from the sample estimate would include the population value. These intervals are called 90-percent confidence intervals. The OES survey, however, usually uses the relative standard error (RSE) of a sample estimate instead of its SE to measure sampling error. RSE is defined as the SE of a sample estimate divided by the sample estimate itself. This statistic provides the user with a measure of the relative precision of the sample estimate. RSEs are calculated for both occupational employment and mean wage rate estimates. Occupational employment RSEs are calculated using a subsample, random group replication technique called the jackknife. Mean wage rate RSEs are calculated using a variance components model that accounts for both the observed and unobserved components of the wage data. The variances of the unobserved components are estimated using wage data from the BLS National Compensation Survey. In general, estimates based on many establishments have lower RSEs than estimates based on few establishments. If the distributional assumptions of the models are violated, the resulting confidence intervals may not reflect the prescribed level of confidence. Nonsampling error occurs for a variety of reasons, none of which are directly connected to sampling. Examples of nonsampling error include: nonresponse, data incorrectly reported by the respondent, mistakes made in entering collected data into the database, and mistakes made in editing and processing the collected data. Additional information The May 2006 OES national data by occupation, are available on the BLS Web site at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm. Users also may access each occupation's definition and percentile wages. The May 2006 cross-industry data for states and metropolitan areas are available on the BLS Web site. Industry staffing patterns at the sector, 3-, 4-, and selected 5- digit NAICS levels also are also available from the Internet. These data include industry-specific occupational employment and wage data. A more detailed technical note for OES is available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.tn.htm. If you have additional questions, you can contact an economist in the Chicago information office at (312) 353-1880, menu option 0, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. (CT). Information in this release will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: 202-691-5200; TDD message referral phone number: 1-800-877-8339.
Last Modified Date: November 13, 2007