Signals mixed on local wage growth
It wasn’t just employment that took a hit during Houston’s oil recession over the past few years — wages declined as well, as high-paid oil jobs disappeared and people became willing to work for less in a tough market.
Now, more than a year after job growth bottomed out, it looks like paychecks are on the rebound as well. But compared with the rest of the country, Houston still lags behind.
Let’s start with government data. It appears that average hourly wages in Houston stopped falling at the beginning of 2017, and now growth is accelerating year-over-year. On an inflation-adjusted basis, average weekly wages seem to be on the mend as well, with April reaching a reasonably healthy growth rate of 2.4 percent over the year before.
However, the story is less rosy when it comes to aggregate wages, which
add up all the salaries paid in the area. That number was still pretty stagnant through the end of 2016, since more lucrative oil and gas jobs hadn’t yet started to return, and those that have aren’t paying the six-figure salaries that had been commonplace.
Turning to nongovernmental data, the career website Glassdoor studied the median, or midpoint, of salaries. Glassdoor finds that median salaries in Houston — which are less likely to be skewed upward or downward by very high or very low numbers — have declined in recent months. Houston’s median salary rose just 0.4 percent in April from a year earlier, trailing all of the 10 other major cities Glassdoor tracks.
So, what to make of these mixed signals in local wage trends? While it seems that paychecks in Houston have stopped shrinking, it will take a stronger job market to really drive them higher.