Occupational Employment and Wages in Lancaster – May 2010

Workers in the Lancaster Metropolitan Statistical Area had an average (mean) hourly wage of $18.81 in May 2010, roughly 12 percent below the nationwide average of $21.35, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sheila Watkins, the Bureau’s regional commissioner, noted that, after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were significantly lower than their respective national averages in 14 of the 22 major occupational groups, including computer and mathematical and management. (See table A and box note at end of release.)

When compared to the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in 5 of the 22 occupational groups, including production and transportation and material moving. Conversely, 10 groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation, including business and financial operations, computer and mathematical, and management.

One occupational group—production—was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories. Lancaster had 24,060 jobs in production, accounting for 10.9 percent of local area employment, significantly above the 6.5-percent share nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $16.27, comparable to the national wage of $16.24.

With employment of 2,630, team assemblers was the largest occupation within the production group, followed by production worker helpers (2,000). Among the higher paying jobs were first-line supervisors of production and operating workers with mean hourly wages of $24.94, and tool and die makers with a wage of $23.99. At the lower end of the wage scale were laundry and dry-cleaning workers ($10.37) and meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers ($10.83). (Detailed occupational data for production are presented in table 1; for a complete listing of detailed occupations available go to www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_29540.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 as it does nationally. In the Lancaster area, above-average concentrations of employment were found in many of the occupations within the production group. For instance, production worker helpers were employed at almost three times the national rate in Lancaster, and food batchmakers at nearly five times the U.S. average. On the other hand, sewing machine operators had a location quotient of 1.0 in Lancaster, 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, the Pennsylvania Center for Workforce Information and Analysis. 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.

Last Modified Date: October 21, 2011

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