Overall wages in Columbia County are among the top 15 in the state, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Department of Labor and its Southwest Information Office in Dallas. By the figures issued Monday, employment rose gradually last year, as did weekly earnings.
The latest Labor Bureau figures last through the fourth quarter of 2018. As of December, Columbia County had 707 total establishments covered, with 8,158 employees. The 12-month change in employment, from December 2017 to December 2018, showed a gain of 1.7 percent, or the addition of 140 employees.
Weekly average wages for employees also rose over the one-year period by 1.9 percent, or $15. In total, workers across all industries earned an average of $795 per week. That figure slots Columbia County 15th among the 75 counties in Arkansas. Total quarterly wages in the county (October-December 2018) equated to $83,961,418.
The data was compiled by the Labor Department under the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program and basic average weekly figures combine “all industries,” including private and government sector jobs.
When breaking down Columbia County wages into separate sector categories, as of December 2018, 6,323 private industry workers earned $803 per week, while 39 federal government employees earned $1,026 per week, and 658 state government workers earned $903 per week. Local government employees counted for the most non-private workers in the county with 1,138 employees, but averaged the lowest weekly wages among all categories at $675 per week.
The weekly national wage average is $1,114. No county in the state, as of December 2018, has reached that mark. The only Arkansas counties as a whole to average over $1,000 per week were Calhoun County at $1,049, Benton County at $1,067, and Mississippi County at $1,071.
The three counties containing the lowest average weekly wages were Sharp County at $555, Searcy County at $536, and Newton County at $518.
Of Columbia County’s neighbors, Union County’s weekly wage rate was highest at $935 (seventh overall), while Ouachita County (35th) saw weekly average wages of $718, Nevada County (37th) had weekly average wages of $716, and Lafayette County (62nd) saw weekly wage earnings of $632.
The state as a whole saw a 2.4-percent positive in average weekly wages, or $20 a per week, over a 12-month stretch ending in December 2018.
“Two Arkansas counties ranked in the top half of the 349 largest counties nationwide,” said a Monday Department of Labor statement. “Average weekly wages in Benton County increased 5.5 percent, which ranked 34th among the 349 largest U.S. counties. Pulaski County’s 1.1-percent wage increase placed 310th. Washington County had an over-the-year wage decline of 1.8 percent, ranking 343rd among the largest U.S. counties.”
According to the Labor Department statistics, Benton County’s average weekly wage of $1,067 ranked 147th among the 349 large U.S. counties. Weekly wages in Washington County and Pulaski County, at $984 and $982, respectively, ranked 215th and 218th nationally.
“Higher-paying counties were generally located around the metropolitan areas of Blytheville, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Texarkana, and along the southern border of the state,” the Monday information release said. “Lower-paying counties were generally concentrated along the northern and western borders of the state.”
The Department of Labor’s 2018 fourth-quarter number also shows that all 72 of Arkansas’s smaller counties — defined as those with employment of less than 75,000 — reported weekly wages below the national average of $1,144.
The state or territory with the highest average weekly wages, as of December 2018, was Washington D.C. at $1,943, followed by Massachusetts at $1,457, and New York at $1,445.
Puerto Rico was the lowest at $576 per week, while Mississippi and Arkansas rounded out the bottom three at $793 and $869, respectively.