Stuck with a five-figure salary working so many hours it seems worth six?
There’s good news and bad news in a report that looked at the increase of six-figure jobs from 2015-20.
The good news: The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton Metropolitan Statistical Area saw a 21.5% increase in jobs paying $100,000 or more, so maybe it’s time to look for a new line of work. The bad news? In the same five years, the nation saw an average increase of 110%.
The study is by Stessa, which bills itself as created “to easily keep track of property performance, finances and the paper trail that comes with real estate investing.” To figure out which MSAs had the highest growth in six figure jobs, the site used data from thee U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Six-figure jobs” was defines as “total employment in occupations with a median annual wage of $100,000 or more.”
Which Metro Area should you move to for best odds of a high-paying job? At first blush, the data suggests you pick an ocean. High-paying jobs “are most common in coastal states including California, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York, where the population tends to have greater educational attainment, cost of living is higher, and high-paying industries like tech, business, law, and health and life sciences are more prevalent,” the report notes.
But that doesn’t mean those places have seen the biggest growth in six-figure jobs. For the best metro by that metric, look no further than some 150 miles south, to Gettysburg, which saw jobs paying $100,000 or more skyrocket by 520% in the time reviewed.
But that’s a “Small Metro,” and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton falls in the “Midsize Metro” category. And compared to the other MSAs at our punching weight, we look — well, better, but not great.
Three midsize metros had growth above 300%: Lansing/East Lansing in Michigan saw six figure jobs increase by 326.5%, Lafayette, Louisiana went up by 320%, and Urban Honolulu in Hawaii climbed by 308.5%
Among the 86 midsize metros in the report, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton ranked 70th. Take comfort in knowing we were not the Pennsylvania midsize Metro with the smallest growth in six-figure jobs. Reading earned that ignominy, where the number of six-figure jobs dropped by 22.8%. And that wasn’t even the worst on the list. That distinction belongs to Montgomery, Alabama, where the number of high-paying jobs dropped 35.7%.
And Montgomery-ites (Montgomerians?) can take cold comfort in knowing they are doing only half as bad as the lowest ranked MSA among all sizes ranked. If you want a high-paying job, steer clear of Rochester, Minnesota, where the number of six-figure jobs dropped 70.8%.
One last note: There’s plenty of room to grow locally on this front. Six figure jobs make up only 1.7% of total employment in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton MSA. Nationally, they make up 7.9% of all jobs.
The full report is available at Stessa.com.