Workers' wages in the Mahoning Valley take a hit over past 7 years

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The last seven years haven’t been a good time to be employed in the Mahoning Valley, with total wages falling around 3.5 percent after inflation.

Workers in the Youngstown Metropolitan Service Area, which includes Mahoning, Trumbull and Mercer (Pa.) counties, are doing worse now than they were at the end of 2007.

Income growth from the last quarter of 2007 to the last quarter of 2013 is 7.8 percent in the Valley, compared to 11.7 percent nationally, said Guhan Venkatu, vice president and senior regional officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

“When you look at inflation over that time, which has been about 11.2 percent, what you see is wage growth nationally has been very modest,” he said.

When you look at the Youngstown MSA, there is a decline in real wages of about 3.5 percent, Venkatu said.

The decline is a pretty bad indication of what is occurring in the local job market, he said. The growth in wages that would normally be seen after a recession just hasn’t been seen here yet, he added.

Statewide results

Recent results at the statewide level haven’t been much better.

“We know with certainty that mean earnings of a job fell in Ohio during 2013. Median wages are not available, but if they were the decline would be larger, since mean earnings are pulled up by very high-wage workers,” said George Zeller, a Cleveland-based economist.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has recently presented a fiscal report about the Youngstown MSA.

“Overall statistics on the Youngstown MSA’s economy indicate that although the Mahoning Valley may be down, it’s definitely not out,” according to the report. “There are a number of obstacles to overcome.”

Those obstacles include:

• The region’s industries are still restructuring.

• Employment has not recovered from either the 2000 or 2007 recessions.

• The population is declining.

• The level of education in the Valley is lower than the national average.

The brighter side of the picture is that per capita income growth in the MSA is on par with, or slightly better than, the national average, according to the Federal Reserve of Cleveland.

Read the full story in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com on Monday, Labor Day.