Workers in the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area had an average (mean) hourly wage of $19.19 in May 2016, about 20 percent below the nationwide average of $23.86, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Assistant Commissioner for Regional Operations Stanley W. Suchman noted that, after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were significantly lower than their respective national averages in 18 of the 22 major occupational groups, including legal; arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media; and computer and mathematical.

When compared to the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in 5 of the 22 occupational groups, including production; transportation and material moving; and installation, maintenance, and repair. Conversely, nine groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation, including computer and mathematical; business and financial operations; and office and administrative support. (See table A and box note at end of release.)

One occupational group—production—was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories. St. Joseph had 7,170 jobs in production occupations, accounting for 13.5 percent of local area employment, significantly higher than the 6.5-percent share nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $16.97, compared to the national wage of $17.88.

Some of the larger detailed occupations within the production group included packaging and filling machine operators and tenders (680), first-line supervisors of production and operating workers (430), and slaughterers and meat packers (250). Among the higher paying jobs were first-line supervisors of production and operating workers, as well as inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers, with mean hourly wages of $31.18 and $21.31, respectively. Occupations at the lower end of the wage scale included production workers’ helpers ($11.89). (Detailed occupational data for production are presented in table 1; for a complete listing of detailed occupations available go to www.bls.gov/oes/2016/may/oes_41140.htm .)

Location quotients allow us to explore the occupational make-up of a metropolitan area by comparing the composition of jobs in an area relative to the national average. (See table 1.) For example, a location quotient of 2.0 indicates that an occupation accounts for twice the share of employment in the area than it does nationally. In the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, above-average concentrations of employment were found in several of the occupations within the production group. For instance, slaughterers and meat packers were employed at 8.3 times the national rate in St. Joseph, and packaging and filling machine operators and tenders, at 4.7 times the U.S. average. On the other hand, inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers had a location quotient of 1.1 in St. Joseph, indicating that this particular occupation’s local and national employment shares were similar.

These statistics are from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, a federal-state cooperative program between BLS and State Workforce Agencies, in this case, the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Technical Note

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey is a semiannual mail survey measuring occupational employment and wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments in the United States. The OES data available from BLS include cross-industry occupational employment and wage estimates for the nation; over 650 areas, including states and the District of Columbia, metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), metropolitan divisions, nonmetropolitan areas, and territories; national industry-specific estimates at the NAICS sector, 3-, 4-, and selected 5- and 6-digit industry levels, and national estimates by ownership across all industries and for schools and hospitals. OES data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.

OES estimates are constructed from a sample of about 1.2 million establishments. Each year, two semiannual panels of approximately 200,000 sampled establishments are contacted, one panel in May and the other in November. Responses are obtained by mail, Internet or other electronic means, email, telephone, or personal visit. The May 2016 estimates are based on responses from six semiannual panels collected over a 3-year period: May 2016, November 2015, May 2015, November 2014, May 2014, and November 2013. The overall national response rate for the six panels, based on the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is 73 percent based on establishments and 69 percent based on weighted sampled employment. The unweighted employment of sampled establishments across all six semiannual panels represents approximately 58 percent of total national employment. The sample in the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area included 933 establishments with a response rate of 69 percent. For more information about OES concepts and methodology, go to www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_tec.htm.  

The May 2016 OES estimates are based on the 2010 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system and the 2012 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Information about the 2010 SOC is available on the BLS website at www.bls.gov/soc and information about the 2012 NAICS is available at www.bls.gov/bls/naics.htm.

Metropolitan area definitions

The substate area data published in this release reflect the standards and definitions established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

The St. Joseph, Mo. Metropolitan Statistical Area includes Andrew, Buchanan, and DeKalb Counties of Missouri and Doniphan County of Kansas.

Additional information

OES data are available on our regional web page at www.bls.gov/regions/mountain-plains. Answers to frequently asked questions about the OES data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm. Detailed technical information about the OES survey is available in our Survey Methods and Reliability Statement on the BLS website at www.bls.gov/oes/current/methods_statement.pdf.

Information in this release will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request . Voice phone: (202) 691-5200; Federal Relay Service: (800) 877-8339.

Table 1. Employment and wage data from the Occupational Employment Statistics survey, by occupation, St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, May 2016

Occupation (1)	Employment		Mean wages
	Level (2)	Location quotient (3)	Hourly	Annual (4)
Production occupations	7,170	2.1	$16.97	$35,300
First-line supervisors of production and operating workers	430	1.9	31.18	64,850
Structural metal fabricators and fitters	(5)	(5)	17.66	36,730
Team assemblers	300	0.7	20.71	43,080
Assemblers and fabricators, all other	150	1.7	12.84	26,700
Bakers	30	0.5	11.20	23,290
Butchers and meat cutters	170	3.4	14.57	30,300
Slaughterers and meat packers	250	8.3	13.57	28,230
Food batchmakers	160	2.9	17.25	35,880
Food processing workers, all other	170	10.2	13.54	28,160
Computer-controlled machine tool operators, metal and plastic	70	1.3	20.61	42,870
Cutting, punching, and press machine setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic	90	1.3	16.03	33,350
Machinists	50	0.3	23.21	48,280
Printing press operators	80	1.2	18.50	38,490
Laundry and dry-cleaning workers	60	0.7	9.38	19,510
Water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators	80	1.9	18.46	38,400
Chemical equipment operators and tenders	120	4.3	20.24	42,100
Separating, filtering, clarifying, precipitating, and still machine setters, operators, and tenders	130	7.3	(5)	(5)
Inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers	210	1.1	21.31	44,320
Packaging and filling machine operators and tenders	680	4.7	15.72	32,690
Painters, transportation equipment	50	2.3	(5)	(5)
Helpers--production workers	540	3.4	11.89	24,730
Production workers, all other	(5)	(5)	13.94	29,000
Footnotes: (1) For a complete listing of all detailed occupations in the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, see www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41140.htm. (2) Estimates for detailed occupations do not sum to the totals because the totals include occupations not shown separately. Estimates do not include self-employed workers. (3) The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration. A location quotient greater than one indicates the occupation has a higher share of employment than average, and a location quotient less than one indicates the occupation is less prevalent in the area than average. (4) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. (5) Estimate not released.