Cost of Living Index for urban areas

Assume that you received a job offer in a different city and weren’t sure about how the cost of living compared to each other. Will you receive more (or less) after-taxes income and will it maintain (or sustain) your present lifestyle in your new location? The Council for Community and Economic Research supplies comparative data for urban areas on a quarterly basis, and areas surveyed include those where organizations have volunteered to participate.

See Utah’s current identified cities below:

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For more about the cost of living index, visit our site and C2ER.

A Story of Wage Data

The Wages and Income page has a new look to the wage data that is gathered by the Workforce Research and Analysis division. Along with visualization of the data, you can now read story points at the top of each graph, to help understand what the data is showing you along with highlighting its insights. Just click along the story points at the top of the visualization to follow the story of wages.

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2012, real median household income and the poverty rate were not statistically different from the previous year, while the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.

Median household income in the United States in 2012 was $51,017, not statistically different in real terms from the 2011 median of $51,100. This followed two consecutive annual declines.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line. This marked the second consecutive year that neither the official poverty rate nor the numbers of people in poverty were statistically different from the previous year’s estimates. The 2012 poverty rate was 2.5 percentage points higher than in 2007, the year before the economic downturn.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage declined to 15.4 percent in 2012 ─ from 15.7 percent in 2011. However, the 48.0 million people without coverage in 2012 were not statistically different from the 48.6 million in 2011.

These findings are contained in the report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012. The following results for the nation were compiled from information collected in the 2013 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). The CPS-ASEC was conducted between February-April 2013 and collected information about income and health insurance coverage during the 2012 calendar year. However, the information on shared households pertains to the circumstances at the time of the survey. The CPS-based report includes comparisons with one year earlier. State and local results will be available on Thursday from the American Community Survey.

Climbing Toward the American Dream

Financial inequality between the rich and the poor has been rising in the United States and in Utah over the past few decades. While such inequality has been connected to societal challenges, these challenges may be mitigated by economic mobility, or the ability of people to move up and down the economic ladder. Following an earlier analysis in 2010, this report examines the American Dream, with a focus on economic mobility in Utah by looking at five equally-sized income percentiles, often referred to as quintiles.

The 2010 report found that about a third of all Utahns were upwardly mobile over the study period. Utah Foundation’s new report includes an expansion of the previous report’s economic mobility analysis by looking at mobility within two periods – from 1994 through 2002 and 2003 through 2011 – and compares mobility across the periods. This comparison allows for an analysis as to whether economic mobility is increasing or decreasing for Utahns. Using a large sample of individual state income tax return data and analysis from the Utah State Tax Commission, Utah Foundation found that mobility has decreased. In other words, more people stayed within their respective income groups in the most recent nine-year period. Utah Foundation

Real Personal Income for States and Metropolitan Areas, 2007‐2011

Click to enlarge

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released experimental real, or inflation-adjusted, estimates of personal income for states and metropolitan areas. The inflation-adjustments are based in part on regional price parities (RPPs) that provide a measure of differences in price levels across each state and region relative to the national price level for each of the years, 2007-2011. When RPPs are applied in conjunction with BEA’s national Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, which measures price changes over time, personal income comparisons can be made across regions and time periods. These prototype statistics are being released for evaluation and comment by data users. Bureau of Economic Analysis

Study shows economic development value of historic preservation

Preserving historic buildings and sites creates jobs and increases property values, according to a study released Monday by the Utah Heritage Foundation.

The study, conducted by Washington, D.C., real estate and economic development consulting firm PlaceEconomics, found that 7,313 jobs were created annually directly or indirectly by the heritage portion of Utah’s tourism industry. In addition, 4,969 total jobs were created between 1990 and 2012 using federal or state historic tax credits, according to the report.

Sixty-two heritage sites and events were visited and evaluated between November 2012 and June of this year for the study. Based on 2012 data, those sites attracted more than 7.2 million visitors annually and show visitors spending nearly $400 million a year.

Using data from an econometric model called Implan, the study indicates that for every $1 million invested in rehabilitating historic buildings in Utah, 17.7 direct and indirect jobs are created, resulting in $850,554 in direct and indirect salary and wages. The $1 million also generates almost $100,000 in economic activity elsewhere in the economy, as well as $34,217 in state sales tax and indirect business tax, according to the study.

Utah Heritage Foundation executive director Kirk Huffaker said the complete 24-page report will be available next month. Deseret News

New study shows financial awareness increase in Utah

Even though roughly one-fourth of Americans claim to be satisfied with their financial health, a new study shows that only 41 percent are living within their means.

The study, which was sponsored by Financial Industry Regulatory Agency Foundation, surveyed more than 25,000 Americans about their “financial health.” While much of the data exposed serious shortcomings in financial responsibility, the report also showed positive signs of improvement.
Deseret News

U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner

Women are not only more likely to be the primary caregivers in a family. Increasingly, they are primary breadwinners, too.

Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.

The shift reflects evolving family dynamics.

For one, it has become more acceptable and expected for married women to join the work force. It is also more common for single women to raise children on their own. Most of the mothers who are chief breadwinners for their families — nearly two-thirds — are single parents. New York Times

When women out‐earn men

A new study out of the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business found that if a woman out-earns a potential husband, the two are less likely to get married. Within couples, if a wife's potential income is likely to exceed her husband's, the wife is less likely to be in the labor force, and if she does work, she will probably earn less than her potential. Additionally, if a woman makes more than her husband, she is more likely to take on a greater percentage of domestic work than a woman who makes less than her husband.

Among the millennial generation, attitudes may be shifting to a more supportive model for women to pursue high-paying jobs. Recent research from Stewart Friedman of the Wharton School of Business shows that changing viewpoints among young men and women may be creating a more conducive environment for both genders to share equally in work both inside and outside the home. Deseret News

Average Starting Salary for Grads With Bachelor’s Degrees Rises 5.3 Percent

Liberal arts and sciences/general studies and history are the top-paid liberal arts majors for Class of 2013 college graduates, according to results of NACE’s April 2013 Salary Survey.

While Salary Survey doesn’t report all positions obtained for each major, following are some of the job titles for these liberal arts graduates:

• Liberal arts and sciences/general studies—Teaching positions
• History—Teaching positions, miscellaneous managers, and paralegals/legal assistants
• English—Teaching positions; social workers and counselors; miscellaneous managers; and paralegals/legal assistants
• Visual and performing arts—Teaching positions; producers and directors; artists and related workers; editors, designers, and photographers. 

NACE

Cost of Living Index

The Cost of Living Index is the most reliable source of city-to-city comparisons of key consumer costs available anywhere, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research. COLI data is recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CNN Money, and the President's Council of Economic Advisors. [Their] data and methodology are described in detail and completely transparent to users. Both data and methodology are reviewed by an Advisory Board composed of academic researchers and government officials. The Cost of Living Index is referenced in the US Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the US.

Feel better about your decision to move. Negotiate a fair salary with your employer or employee. Be an informed researcher about local pricing. Tap the Cost of Living Index today as the source for comparing prices and the overall cost of living in more than 300 cities. C2ER

Cost of Living Index – Table 728

Do women avoid salary negotiations?

Past studies have demonstrated that women earn approximately three-quarters of what men earn and that women represent only 2.5 percent of the highest-paid positions at U.S. firms. Researchers have long sought to identify the source of these wage gaps, which might be differences in human capital, workplace practices such as maternal-leave policies, general discrimination, and differences in competitiveness. Some evidence also suggests that men and women differ in the way that they negotiate for wages, and that women are less likely to engage in salary negotiations at all.

In Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? Evidence from a Large Scale Natural Field Experiment (NBER Working Paper No. 18511), co-authors Andreas Leibbrandt and John List report on an extensive nine-city field study which involved advertisements for actual administrative-assistant jobs. They find that in responding to these ads, men are more apt to initiate wage negotiations when there is no explicit statement at the outset that wages are negotiable. Men also generally prefer positions for which the "rules of wage determination" are left ambiguous. However, women become more aggressive in negotiating wages when the advertisement explicitly states that wages are negotiable; this erases and even reverses the gender differences. National Bureau of Economic Research

How much does today’s lifestyle cost in 2040?

We were talking about inflation the other day with a client, and found ourselves with pen and paper drawing rectangles increasing wildly in size. Are those scales right? How much will the lifestyle they live today actually cost in 2040?

[Future Advisor] took data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and calculated a “cost of lifestyle” for 2040. Future Advisor

Modest Financial Activities Job Growth

In addition to the construction industry, another major industry sector at the center of the housing boom and bust, with the subsequent financial meltdown and the Great Recession, was financial activities. Banks, credit unions and other financing businesses, along with real estate agents, brokers and related activities are within the financial activities industry group.

Over the past ten years, there was a significant increase in financial activities jobs. Included within the decade was the housing boom that ended in 2007, a rather dramatic drop of employment as a result of the 2008/2009 recession and renewed job growth since 2010. In 2002 total employment in the industry stood at 63,300, comprising about 5.4 percent of all payroll jobs in Utah. With the housing boom and hot economy, financial activities employment reached a peak annual average of 74,700 in 2007, accounting for 6.0 percent of payroll jobs in the state. Over this five-year period, jobs were growing at 3.6 percent per year compared to overall Utah payroll job growth of 3.3 percent.

Read more here in the latest issue of Trendlines.

Out of Reach 2013

The Housing Wage in Out of Reach captures the gap between wages and rents across the country, and is the estimate of the full-time hourly wage that a household must earn to afford a decent apartment at the HUD estimated Fair Market Rent (FMR), while spending no more than 30% of income on housing costs. The 2013 Housing Wage is $18.79, exceeding the $14.32 hourly wage earned by the average renter by almost $4.50 an hour, and greatly exceeding wages earned by low income renter households.

Each year, Out of Reach demonstrates that large numbers of low income renters cannot afford the cost of living in the cities and towns where they work. This edition underscores the challenges facing the lowest income renters: increasing rents, stagnating wages, and a shortage of affordable housing. The urgent solution to these issues is clear: expanding the supply of affordable housing units, dedicated to the lowest income renters.

Housing costs vary across the nation, but the lack of affordable housing affects low-wage workers in all corners of the country. In order to close the gap between the demand for affordable housing and the supply, we would need to add 4.5 million units affordable to ELI households. This is not an unattainable goal. Once funded, the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) would provide states with the dollars they need to expand the stock of housing that is affordable to ELI households.

In Utah, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $777. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities – without paying more than 30% of income on housing – a household must earn $2,590 monthly or $31,079 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, and this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $14.94.

In Utah, a minimum wage worker earns an hourly wage of $7.25. In order to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment, a minimum wage earner must work 82 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. Or a household must include 2.1 minimum wage earners working 40 hours per week year-round in order to make the two-bedroom FMR affordable.

In Utah, the estimated mean (average) wage for a renter is $11.78. In order to afford the FMR for a two-bedroom apartment at this wage, a renter must work 51 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. Or, working 40 hours per week year-round, a household must include 1.3 workers earning the mean renter wage in order to make the two-bedroom FMR affordable. National Low Income Housing Coalition

Women in the Labor Force: A Databook

Over the past 4 decades, women have made notable changes in their labor force activities. Labor force participation is significantly higher among women today than it was in the 1970s, particularly among women with children, and larger shares of women are working full time and year round. In addition, women have increasingly attained higher levels of education: among women ages 25 to 64 who are in the labor force, the proportion with a college degree roughly tripled from 1970 to 2011. Women’s earnings as a proportion of men’s earnings also have grown over time. In 1979, women working full time earned 62 percent of what men did; in 2011, women’s earnings were 82 percent of men’s.

This report presents historical and current labor force and earnings data for women and men from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a national monthly survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women’s labor force participation rate peaked at 60.0 percent in 1999, following several decades in which women increasingly entered the labor market. In 2011, 58.1 percent of women were in the labor force, down 0.5 percentage point from 2010.

The educational attainment of women ages 25 to 64 in the labor force has risen substantially over the past 40 years. In 2011, 37 percent of these women held college degrees, compared with 11 percent in 1970. About 7 percent of women had less than a high school diploma (that is, did not graduate high school) in 2011, down from 34 percent in 1970.

In 2011, women accounted for 51 percent of all persons employed in management, professional, and related occupations, somewhat more than their share of total employment (47 percent). The share of women in specific occupations within this large category varied. For example, 14 percent of architects and engineers and 34 percent of physicians and surgeons were women, whereas 61 percent of accountants and auditors and 82 percent of elementary and middle school teachers were women.

Women who worked full time in wage and salary jobs had median usual weekly earnings of $684 in 2011. This represented 82 percent of men’s median weekly earnings ($832). Among women, earnings were higher for Asians ($751) and Whites ($703) than for Blacks ($595) and Hispanics ($518). Women’s-to-men’s earnings ratios were higher for Blacks and Hispanics (both 91 percent) than for Whites (82 percent) and Asians (77 percent). Users should note that the comparisons of earnings in this report are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that may be significant in explaining earnings differences.

In 2011, 27 percent of employed women usually worked part time—that is, fewer than 35 hours per week. In comparison, 11 percent of employed men usually worked part time.

To read more of this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, click here.

Middle-income claptrap

Economic backwardness has its advantages. Latecomers to industrialization can follow the path their forerunners broke before them and perhaps skip some steps along the way. As a result, poor countries can narrow the gap with rich ones. But this happy principle of economic convergence does not always hold sway. Some poor countries fail to get going. Others make quick progress, and then lose their way. The first lot is sometimes described as victims of a “poverty trap”. The second are increasingly described as casualties of a “middle-income trap”.

But is the middle-income trap worthy of the name? Is there something especially treacherous about the levels of development that China is now approaching? Despite the term’s popularity, the theory and evidence behind it are surprisingly thin.

First, the theory. Rich countries boast the best technologies; poor countries the lowest wages. Middle-income countries have neither. Intuition suggests they must struggle to compete with countries above and below them. Poor countries also benefit from moving workers out of over manned farms and into factories, where they are many times more productive. But a decade or two of fast growth will empty the fields of surplus workers, obliging countries to raise productivity within their factories if they are to make further progress. Their economies would seem to face a tricky jump from one growth model to another.

But intuition can mislead. Both pay and productivity exist along a continuum. Countries can remain “competitive” at any level of wages and productivity, provided one stays in line with the other. The evolution from one growth model to another is also continuous. Factories do not wait until the last underemployed laborer has left the farm to begin improving the productivity of the workers who have already arrived. Moreover, as the urban workforce grows in size, a steady flow of new arrivals from the villages makes a smaller proportionate impact.

So much for the theory, what about the evidence? The middle-income trap is rarely defined clearly enough to be tested. Some of its proponents argue that middle-income countries typically grow more slowly than richer and poorer economies. That is claptrap. If anything, they grow faster. The left-hand chart uses the Penn World Tables, which compare incomes across countries and over time from 1950 to 2010. Economies with an income per head of $13,000-14,000 (at purchasing-power parity) achieved per-person growth of almost 2.9% over the next ten years on average. That is faster than the average for any other income level. The Economist

Coupons’ role shifts as market, buyers evolve

In the heart of the recession, the United States became a coupon-crazy country, clipping, printing and downloading billions of coupons a year.

That’s still true, but the coupon industry is rapidly evolving, attracting younger users and more men, as well as zapping out more digital and mobile versions of the classic cents-off paper coupon.

Last year, the number of manufacturers’ coupons issued — for everything from diapers to dog food — was a staggering 305 billion. That’s a lot of coupons to be clipped, printed or downloaded.

Yet the number of coupons actually cashed in by U.S. consumers in 2012 slipped 17 percent, compared with the previous year, according to NCH Marketing Services in Deerfield, Ill., which tracks annual coupon usage.

Although paper coupons clipped out of the Sunday paper still dominate, digital coupons on websites, mobile phones and retailers’ loyalty cards are attracting a younger and increasingly male audience. At the same time, manufacturers are offering more nonfood coupons, which may affect demand.

Despite the recent dip, coupon usage is still well above what it was before the recession, according to NCH data.

That comes as no surprise to "frugal bloggers" such as Ashley Thompson, 29, of Sacramento, Calif., who got hooked on couponing after college as a way to pinch pennies.

Also factoring into the mix are so-called online daily deal sites, such as Groupon and Living Social, which have sprouted — and withered— at a fast pace. Salt Lake Tribune

Economic mobility gains may be due to dual-income families

More American families are better financially than their parents through dual incomes, according to a new report released Tuesday.

A previous look at absolute economic mobility by Pew showed how 83 percent of families make more than their parents did, adjusting for inflation and family size. A new interactive graphic at www.pewstates.org digs deeper into the data — giving people a look at the extent of how people are doing better and dividing the information up by race, education and number of earners.

The study shows that a greater proportion of dual-earner families have more income than their parents did when compared with single-earner families. Ninety-three percent of dual-earner families are making more than their parents, while 77 percent of single-earner families are making more.

Setting the graphic to see how many dual-earner families are making at least $25,000 more than their parents shows a starker difference. Sixty-two percent of dual-earner families are making at least 25,000 more than their parents, while only 35 percent of single-earner families do the same.

But if the interactive data is set to show what percentage of dual- and single-earner families are making at least $100,000 more in income, the gap between the number of earners disappears. Six percent of both dual- and single-earners make that much more than their parents.

It is increasingly the case that having two workers in a family is important for upward mobility," Elliott said. "Given that we have more dual-earner families in this country and we also have this growth in upward income mobility, (the data) points to this connection between dual-earner families and upward income mobility." Deseret News

To learn more about economic mobility, watch the following video by Pew Charitable Trusts.

U.S. maternity leave trails other countries, and going away may not mean 'out of the office'

With fewer than 11 percent of working parents in the private industry receiving paid leave when a child is born, America lags behind every other industrial country — and most others, too. And when new moms and dads take leave, they may not be able to leave work at the office. Technology has extended work's reach into homes and nurseries.

The New York Times notes that "when it comes to paid parental leave, the United States is among the least generous in the world, ranking down with the handful of countries that don't offer any paid leave at all, among them Liberia, Suriname and Papua New Guinea."

That doesn't mean that some parents can't take leave at the birth of a child. It has been 20 years since the Family and Medical Leave Act became law. Under its provisions, large employers and public agencies must provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, as well as continue health benefits, for birth or adoption of a child, to care for a spouse, parent or child who is ill or for an individual's own health issues. The provision applies to companies with 50 or more employees and it extends to employees who worked 1,250 or more hours within the previous 12 months.

Considering all the people that don't fit within those parameters and adding in the people who can't afford to take unpaid leave, and close to 40 percent of workers "fall through the cracks," wrote the Times' Tara Siegel Bernard.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 11 percent of private industry workers have access to paid family leave. The Institute for Women's Policy Research says those most likely to have paid leave are those with higher salaries in managerial or professional jobs at large companies, the newspaper said.
States are looking at other aspects of parental leave having nothing to do with pay, but rather focusing on time off. As an article in The Washington Post emphasized, being on leave doesn't always mean leaving your work behind. Deseret News