I generally like to report rough average wages in direct, indirect and induced jobs when I write up results, just by dividing direct/indirect/induced labor income by direct/indirect/induced employment.
For this analysis, while my indirect and induced average wages made sense (about $60k and $80k, respectively, just above and just below the average salary in the state), wages from direct employment were substantially lower, at only about $29k.
Looking more closely at the results by sector, I found a couple of sectors that seem to be heavily driving this. For example, I have about 4800 direct FTEs in sector 451, but only about $1 million in direct employee compensation. How could that be possible? That's only about $200 per FTE.
In sector 394 (general merchandise retail), I have about 100,000 direct FTEs and $1.4b in direct employee compensation, which works out to about $13k on average. If each FTE works a standard 2,080 hours per year, this would mean their hourly earnings are well below federal minimum wage. I know wages are generally not high in this sector, but indirect and induced average wages are about more where I'd have expected them ($46k).
Is there any known reason this might be happening?
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