January 11, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Montana had the lowest pay in 1998
In 1998, Montana
posted the lowest average annual pay of all the states—$22,644.
![Average annual pay for all covered workers, U.S. and selected States, 1998](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925075654im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2000/jan/wk2/art02.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
The next lowest pay levels were in South Dakota ($22,754), North Dakota
($22,990), Mississippi ($23,822), and Arkansas ($24,422). These five
states continued to have the lowest wages in the nation, as they have for
the past 11 years.
The 1998 average annual pay figures for these five states, which
account for only 3 percent of the nation's workers, were 23 to 29 percent
below the national average of $31,908. Average annual pay levels for 37
states were below the U.S. average in 1998.
The BLS
Covered
Employment and Wages program
produced these data. Pay data presented here are for all workers covered
by State and Federal unemployment insurance programs. Find more
information on pay in 1998 in "Average
Annual Pay By State and Industry, 1998,"
news release USDL 99-357.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »