Here are the counties that saw the biggest average pay increases in 2023:
Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta, is some kind of weird outlier with 18% real wage growth since last year. I have no idea why. After that, everything looks fairly normal with no special geographic focus.
When starting from a small value…?
Exactly. If Harris or Dade or some other counties were showing up in the mix I would be impressed. With these smaller ones, not so much -- add one business, and you maybe got a boom on your hands. Glad they're all getting paid more, anyway.
Broome County!! It's been going downhill since I left last century, or rather IBM left. Wonder what's happening.
Possibly an effect of people moving out of urban areas for working remote.
How big is it? Could be one of those Bill Gates walks into the bar and the average wealth is now in the millions. In a smallish suburb one or two CEOs moving in could raise the average a lot.
Kitsap County WA has a high percentage of its economy tied up in naval facilities, including Bremerton Naval Shipyard and Submarine Base Bangor.
It's also a commuter suburb of Seattle, so it may have benefited from WFH. I drive through the area now and then en route to Seattle, and I've noticed the area moving upmarket over the last decade.
lee county, florida, was absolutely hammered by hurricane ian a year ago. i suspect wage growth there is being driven by the need for skilled and unskilled workers, building supplies and even retail goods as homes and businesses are rebuilt. it's possibly the same in the other florida counties listed in the chart. after living in florida for 36 years i've found out that there is nothing like a natural disaster and the influx of insurance dollars to boost a local economy.
Stark Co, OH, is the Canton region, where the pro football Hall of Fame is. Outside of that it looks like the usual small-city eds, meds, & retail employer pattern, except for bearing maker Timken, which is headquartered there. A lot of its economy is, or used to be, oriented toward car, truck, and heavy-vehicle components. So, no real idea why it would be on this list.
One section of Greene Co. is a fast-growing bedroom suburb of Dayton and the whole county doesn't have that big a population (around 160,000), so you could be seeing the effect of a relatively small proportion of people coming in with with relatively higher-incomes. Maybe something similar is happening in Clayton?
Timken! Wow, that brings back the memories. They used to advertise in business magazines all the time back when the US was more interested in economic growth. It's good to hear that they're still around. Now, I wonder what happened to Warner-Swasey.
I have no idea why either and I live here. Clayton is a pit. The only thing worthwhile down there is Spivey Hall.