Wage Growth in Rural Idaho Outpaced Urban Counties in 2007

The economic slowdown that eventually grew into a national recession in late 2007 hit Idaho’s urban counties much sooner than the state’s rural areas, according to new wage estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The increase in Idaho’s average annual wage from 2006 to 2007 was substantially less than the year before.

In 2006 when Idaho’s economy was still heating up, urban wages rose 5.6 percent, and rural wages were up only 5.1 percent.

In 2007, wages in rural Idaho rose nearly 3.7 percent while wages in the urban areas were up less than 3 percent.

Statewide, Idaho’s average annual wage rose 3.2 percent in 2007 to just over $33,200. The urban average was $34,500, and the rural average was $30,500. Butte County, home to the Idaho National Laboratory and its cadre of scientists, had the highest average wage at over $70,300. Ada County was next at $39,700, and Oneida in southeastern Idaho had the lowest at just under $22,800.

Nationally, the average annual wage hit $43,900 in 2007, up 4.5 percent and only the second time in the last seven years that the national wage increase has been higher than the wage increase for rural Idaho.

The rural-urban pattern was the same during and after the last recession. Rural Idaho posted small but substantially larger annual wage increases than urban Idaho during both the recession year of 2001 and its fallout in 2002, reflecting the greater economic volatility in urban areas where population and the economic activity that follows it ebb and flow in greater proportions.

Idaho’s average wage declined in three counties between 2006 and 2007 – Camas County in central Idaho, which relies heavily on tourism; Butte County, where waste cleanup at the Idaho National Laboratory was winding down; and Boise County, where three in 10 residents work in neighboring Ada County, which was hit by significant layoffs, especially in the high technology sector.

Teton County, which experienced dramatic population growth and where many residents commute across the Teton Range to Jackson, Wyo., was the only county with a double-digit increase in the average wage, up 10.7 percent to $30,300.

Per capita income – the amount of personal income equally allocated to every man, woman and child – was up 4.7 percent statewide to $31,800. The urban areas saw a modest increase of 3.4 percent to $33,500 while the rural counties rose 7.5 percent to $28,600. Per capita income was highest at $64,200 in Blaine County, home to the Sun Valley resort and its wealthy residents. The lowest was $16,200 in Madison County, which includes a heavy concentration of students attending Brigham Young University-Idaho.