County Employment and Wages in the Delmarva Peninsula – Fourth Quarter 2011

Delmarva Peninsula Employment Increased; Wages Declined Over the Year

With the three highest employment levels on the Delmarva Peninsula, Delaware’s counties employed 70 percent of the area’s workers in December 2011. Maryland’s nine counties employed 27 percent of the workers on the peninsula and Virginia’s two counties accounted for the remainder. Following the three Delaware counties, two other counties employed more than 25,000 workers—Wicomico (44,324) and Cecil (28,199), both in Maryland. Located at the southern tip of the peninsula, Northampton, Va., had the fewest jobs, at 4,496. Maryland’s southernmost county, Somerset, was next with 6,669. Other counties employing fewer than 10,000 workers were Kent, Md. (7,387), and Caroline, Md. (8,480).  

Workers on the Delmarva Peninsula earned an average of $895 per week in the fourth quarter of 2011—$60 below the national average of $955. In addition to employing the most workers on the peninsula, New Castle, Del., also had the highest average weekly wage, at $1,102. New Castle was the only county on the Delmarva Peninsula with an average weekly wage above that for the United States; the second-highest average wage on the peninsula was $790 per week in Cecil County, Md. Each of these two counties is part of the Wilmington, Del.-N.J.-Md. Metropolitan Division. Accomack, Va., at $609, had the lowest average weekly wage on the Delmarva Peninsula, followed by Northampton, Va., at $618. Four other counties on the peninsula had average weekly wages below $700—36 percent or more below the national average. (See chart 1.)

Additional statistics and other information

For additional information about quarterly employment and wages data, please read the Technical Note or visit the QCEW Web site at www.bls.gov/cew/.

Employment and Wages Annual Averages Online features comprehensive information by detailed industry on establishments, employment, and wages for the nation and all states. The 2010 edition of this publication, which was published in November 2011, contains selected data produced by Business Employment Dynamics (BED) on job gains and losses, as well as selected data from the first quarter 2011 version of the national news release. Tables and additional content from Employment and Wages Annual Averages 2010 are now available online at www.bls.gov/cew/cewbultn10.htm.  The 2011 edition of Employment and Wages Annual Averages Online will be available later in 2012.

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Footnotes

¹The Delmarva Peninsula, located on the East Coast of the United States, comprises portions of three states―Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.  The Delmarva Peninsula includes Kent, New Castle, and Sussex Counties in Delaware; Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s, Somerset, Talbot, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties in Maryland; and Accomack and Northampton Counties in Virginia.

Technical Note

Average weekly wage data by county are compiled under the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program, also known as the ES-202 program. The data are derived from summaries of employment and total pay of workers covered by state and federal unemployment insurance (UI) legislation and provided by State Workforce Agencies (SWAs). The 9.2 million employer reports cover 131.3 million full- and part-time workers. The average weekly wage values are calculated by dividing quarterly total wages by the average of the three monthly employment levels of those covered by UI programs. The result is then divided by 13, the number of weeks in a quarter. It is to be noted, therefore, that over-the-year wage changes for geographic areas may reflect shifts in the composition of employment by industry, occupation, and such other factors as hours of work. Thus, wages may vary among counties, metropolitan areas, or states for reasons other than changes in the average wage level. Data for all states, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), counties, and the nation are available on the BLS Web site at www.bls.gov/cew/; however, data in QCEW press releases have been revised and may not match the data contained on the Bureau’s Web site.

QCEW data are not designed as a time series. QCEW data are simply the sums of individual establishment records reflecting the number of establishments that exist in a county or industry at a point in time. Establishments can move in or out of a county or industry for a number of reasons—some reflecting economic events, others reflecting administrative changes.

The preliminary QCEW data presented in this release may differ from data released by the individual states as well as from the data presented on the BLS Web site. These potential differences result from the states’ continuing receipt, review and editing of UI data over time. On the other hand, differences between data in this release and the data found on the BLS Web site are the result of adjustments made to improve over-the-year comparisons. Specifically, these adjustments account for administrative (noneconomic) changes such as a correction to a previously reported location or industry classification. Adjusting for these administrative changes allows users to more accurately assess changes of an economic nature (such as a firm moving from one county to another or changing its primary economic activity) over a 12-month period. Currently, adjusted data are available only from BLS press releases.