Technology industry wages still outpace private sector

Idaho’s technology industry still pays higher wages than the average private-sector wage, according to a recent national survey.

High-tech wages in every state continued to significantly exceed overall private-sector wages, the report by the former American Electronics Association (now “AeA”) said.
“There is no question that that is true,” said Idaho Department of Labor spokesman Bob Fick.
In 2006, tech workers in California earned on average 112 percent more than the state’s private-sector workforce – $101,200 compared with $47,800, the AeA found. Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Colorado rounded out the top five states with largest differentials between high-tech and private-sector average wages.
Idaho’s high-tech industry saw a modest net gain of 200 jobs, for an industry total of 36,400 tech workers in 2006, the most current state data available. Idaho’s largest and fastest growing sector is semiconductor manufacturing, which employed 12,100 workers and added 900 jobs in 2006, offsetting losses in several other sectors.
Idaho also has the 10th highest tech concentration nationwide with 68 of every 1,000 private sector workers in high-tech. This is particularly significant considering that these high-tech workers’ average wages are 107 percent higher than the average private sector wage, according to the report.
Micron, the region’s largest manufacturer, conducted layoffs in 2007 that were not accounted for in this report.
Fick said multiple factors influence how tech-sector layoffs influence wages paid to other people in the tech sector. These factors include the ability of other employers to hire the displaced workers, and the number of new tech-focused college graduates and in-migrants, he said.
High-tech earnings per worker were an average of $66,107 in Idaho in 2006, which ranked the state 30th, Fick said, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers. High-tech jobs paid 88 percent more than the Idaho average wage.
Idaho’s high-tech earnings were 84.3 percent of the national average for the sector that year, also placing the state 30th, he said. New Jersey topped the national rankings at 118.4 percent of average.
Fick said that in 2006, half of 1 percent of the nation’s high-tech jobs were in Idaho, ranking 39th. And 8.5 percent of all Idaho jobs were high-tech, ranking 23rd.
In Idaho in 2006, 7.6 percent of employers were “high-tech,” ranking the state 27th.
“There is no such thing as ‘the high-tech sector’ in industry code,” Fick said. The numbers reflect a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics formula and method based on several individual job codes determined to be high-tech, he said. “There has been some debate over how valid it is.”
Rick Ritter heads Idaho TechConnect. The organization promotes technology innovation, entrepreneurship and college-industry collaboration. It encourages investments that support an innovation-based economy.
Technology executives have been working to attract more high-tech workers to Idaho, he said.
One idea under consideration is to form a group representing more than two dozen Idaho high-tech companies at college job fairs up and down the West Coast. Ritter said this would be more efficient than having each company send a representative, and would show recruits that Idaho has a substantial number of technology companies.
People who consider taking an Idaho technology job often notice that they could earn more in some other parts of the country, Ritter said.
Idaho’s quality of life makes up for this to an extent, but “if we can get our employers to close that gap to somewhere around 18 to 20 percent instead of 30 or 35 percent, we could probably attract all the individual talent we wanted,” he said.
Tech-sector layoffs usually impact total technology payroll less than anticipated, because wages are rising, Ritter said.
Nationally, Cyberstates 2008 shows that the high-tech industry added jobs for the third consecutive year. Tech industry employment totaled 5.9 million, after adding 91,400 jobs in 2007. This is on top of job gains of 139,000 in 2006 and 87,400 in 2005.