For release: Wednesday, October 26, 2011  (PDF)

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Occupational Employment and Wages in Iowa City, May 2010

Workers in the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area had an average (mean) hourly wage of $20.11 in May 2010, roughly 6 percent below the nationwide average of $21.35, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Regional Commissioner Charlene Peiffer noted that, after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were significantly higher than their respective national averages in 1 of the 22 major occupational groups: building and grounds cleaning and maintenance. Fifteen groups had significantly lower wages than their respective national averages, including legal, business and finanacial operations, and sales and related.

When compared to the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in 5 of the 22 occupational groups, including healthcare practitioners and technical; food preparation and serving related; and life, physical, and social science. Conversely, nine groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation, including production, protective service, and construction and extraction. (See table A. and box note at end of release.)

Table A. Occupational employment and wages by major occupational group, United States and the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area, and measures of statistical significance, May 2010

Major occupational group	Percent of total employment		Average hourly wage
	United States	Iowa City	United States	Iowa City
Total, all occupations	100.0%	100.0%	$21.35	$20.11
Management	4.7	4.0*	50.69	41.14*
Business and financial operations	4.8	4.8	32.54	24.89*
Computer and mathematical	2.6	2.4*	37.13	29.90*
Architecture and engineering	1.8	0.9*	36.32	29.91*
Life, physical, and social science	0.8	2.4*	31.92	25.42*
Community and social services	1.5	1.3	20.76	19.37*
Legal	0.8	0.4*	46.60	26.20*
Education, training, and library	6.7	7.3	24.25	37.64
Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media	1.4	1.2	25.14	21.18*
Healthcare practitioner and technical	5.8	8.0*	34.27	30.52*
Healthcare support	3.1	3.5*	12.94	13.22
Protective service	2.5	1.4*	20.43	18.53*
Food preparation and serving related	8.7	10.2*	10.21	9.44*
Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance	3.3	3.1	12.16	12.93*
Personal care and service	2.7	3.2*	11.82	11.57
Sales and related	10.6	10.0	17.69	13.80*
Office and administrative support	16.9	16.6	16.09	16.67
Farming, fishing, and forestry	0.3	0.1*	11.70	11.85
Construction and extraction	4.0	3.0*	21.09	19.41*
Installation, maintenance, and repair	3.9	3.0*	20.58	18.90*
Production	6.5	5.3*	16.24	15.51*
Transportation and material moving	6.7	8.1	15.70	16.56
Footnotes: * The percent share of employment or mean hourly wage for this area is significantly different from the national average of all areas at the 90-percent confidence level.

One occupational group—healthcare practitioners and technical—was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories. Iowa City had 6,540 jobs in healthcare practitioners and technical, accounting for 8.0 percent of local area employment, significantly higher than the 5.8-percent share nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $30.52, measurably below the national wage of $34.27.

With employment of 370, pharmacy technicians was the largest occupation within the healthcare practitioners and technical group, followed by pharmacists (300) and medical and clinical laboratory technicians (240). Among the higher paying jobs were family and general practitioners with mean hourly wages of $109.49. Pharmacists earned $46.33 per hour. At the lower end of the wage scale were opticians, dispensing ($11.75) and pharmacy technicians ($15.17). (Detailed occupational data for healthcare practitioners and technical are presented in table 1; for a complete listing of detailed occupations available go to www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_26980.htm)

Location quotients allow us to explore the occupational make-up of a metropolitan area by comparing the composition of jobs in an area relative to the national average. (See table 1.) For example, a location quotient of 2.0 indicates that an occupation accounts for twice the share of employment in the area than it does nationally. In the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area, above average concentrations of employment were found in many of the occupations within the healthcare practitioners and technical group. For instance, medical and clinical laboratory technicians were employed at 2.4 times the national rate in Iowa City, and pharmacists, at 1.7 times the U.S. average. On the other hand, emergency medical technicians and paramedics had a location quotient of 0.9 in Iowa City, indicating that this particular occupation’s local and national employment shares were similar.

These statistics are from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, a federal-state cooperative program between BLS and State Workforce Agencies, in this case, Iowa Workforce Development. The OES survey provides estimates of employment and hourly and annual wages for wage and salary workers in 22 major occupational groups and nearly 800 non-military detailed occupations for the nation, states, metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan divisions, and nonmetropolitan areas.