Wage stagnation in Minnesota in one chart

Hate to pull the old "one chart" trick on everybody, but in this case, it sticks.

Industries that pay what many people would consider middle income wages ($45,000 to $70,000 per year) have shed more than 30,000 jobs in the past five years in Minnesota, while industries that pay less than $45,000 per year have gained more than 30,000 jobs over the same period.

Interestingly, the state has added more than 10,000 jobs in industries that pay more than $70,000 per year.

This is a nice local addendum to the latest Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve, which shows that real wages are either sinking or stagnant for most Americans.

The report is a dreary chronicle of something that more and more Americans are feeling. Quality jobs with good wages are becoming more scarce, and the poor are falling further behind.

"Families at the bottom of the income distribution saw continued substantial declines in average real incomes between 2010 and 2013, continuing the trend observed between the 2007 and 2010 surveys," the Fed report says.

Families in the middle to upper middle part of the national income distribution (between the 40th and 90th percentile) saw no gains in real income from 2010 to 2013, meaning they have not recovered their losses from the recession.

In Minnesota, as the above chart shows, part of the problem is that middle-income jobs are evaporating. If you strip out all the middle-income health care jobs at hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices, industries that pay an average wage of $45,000 to $70,000 per year lost almost 50,000 jobs over the past five years.

That is an astonishing decline, driven mostly by losses in manufacturing and construction, but also transportation and warehousing and a category called information, which includes publishing, news organizations and telecommunications.

The big gainers among low-wage industries were health care, as we showed in a story earlier this week.

A note on the Minnesota data: It comes from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which is the gold standard of detailed, reliable job and wage data in the state. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development has done a wonderful job of making it available for download and I highly recommend it.

Wages in the data are listed by week, so in order to get annual wages I multiplied by 52. That's not a perfect way to do it, but I think it's mostly fair, and if anything, overstates annual wages for certain industries.

Here's the spreadsheet I put together: