Wage data skewed?

Utah trailed the nation in year-over-year growth of average weekly wages last spring, but a local economist wonders if that is holding true today.

Even the largest gainer among the state's four most-populous counties, Utah County at 3.8 percent, was lower than the national average of 3.9 percent, according to second-quarter 2005 figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Utah's average weekly wages climbed 3.2 percent from the 2004 second quarter, putting it 41st among states and the District of Columbia.

The state's average weekly wage in the second quarter of 2005 was $622, or 37th among states, and short of the national average of $751.

"Were they to survey us again in the second quarter of this year, in terms of the weekly wage, we might still be in the high 20s or low 30s, but the growth in wages would be higher, mainly because the Utah economy is running on all cylinders right now," said Jeff Thredgold, economic consultant to Zions Bank.

Thredgold cited job growth during the past year at 4.8 percent, or nearly 53,000 jobs, and an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent as indicators of a booming economy.

"What you find now is a lot of employers having to either increase opening wages or boost wages a bit more than they would care for to remain fully staffed. I expect wages this year would be up something closer to 4 to 5 percent on average," he said.

"Given that now we've been in the top four in employment growth the last 18 months nationwide, you've got more and more companies talking about having to pay signing bonuses in order to find anybody to hire now, that the growth in wages this year will exceed that of last year, and I suspect we will at least match if not exceed the national average."

Thredgold said a better measure of incomes would be an average wage of full-time workers. Both per capita income figures and average weekly wages are skewed, he said — the per capita figure by Utah's larger households and the average wage by Utah's highest-in-the-country percentage of high school and college students working part-time jobs.

The bureau's statistics showed that Utah's average fell in the middle of Intermountain state figures. Colorado's $769, Nevada's $738 and Arizona's $723 were ahead of Utah, although the state's average was higher than Wyoming's $616 and Idaho's $574.