Income
How much money are we making? This is an important question which we all have to deal with every day. This is important to our households as it determines not just what luxuries we will be able to afford, but sometimes how hungry we will be or how cold we will have to be in the winter. Because household income plays such an important role in spending, it is of direct interest to area businesses. Will people come in to our stores to buy? Will we be able to keep all our employees, or be faced with the difficult decision of how to cut back on staff?
Income is an admittedly indirect way to assess potential spending, but we can be fairly certain that changes in income will translate into changes in spending in the same direction. We will present here two measures of income. One way is to look at average weekly wages. That will tell us how well jobs are paying. However, that doesn’t tell us anything about those who don’t get paid anything (the unemployed), or about the number of persons that income has to support (related to the number of dependents). The extent of unemployment and dependency will indirectly show up in another measure, the average income per capita. We show both of these in Figures I1 and I2. Income per capita is only available up through 2003 at the time of this writing.
Comparing across counties, perhaps the first thing that occurs to the eye is that incomes in Lafayette County are the lowest of the lot no matter how it is measured, at least $4000 per capita per year lower. While weekly wages show increase over the past several years including from 2003 to 2004, per capita income dips in 2003. Thus, while wages in paying jobs are increasing, at the same time the increasing unemployment in Lafayette Country means that income is being spread more thinly.
Another thing to note is that though Rock County has by far the highest average weekly wages of the five and indeed rivals the Wisconsin average in that regard, Rock County income per capita lags behind that of Green and Jefferson Counties and until 2003 that of Walworth County as well.
Wages in Walworth County itself were roughly similar to those of Green and Jefferson Counties in 2004, though income per capita lagged slightly behind. However, while income per capita and weekly wages in Walworth County showed modest growth from 2001 to 2003, there appears to be a spurt in wage growth for 2004. Green and Jefferson Counties show similar spurts in wages in that year. Only Rock County showed a decline in weekly wages for 2004. With the continued growth in employment in Rock County during that year however, we would expect that per capita incomes would show continued improvement for 2004.
What might we expect to be the case for 2005? It is difficult to speculate on weekly wages. For most counties it is reasonable to assume that weekly wages would at least not decline given the growth seen from 2001 to 2004. It is possible that the wage decline in Rock County seen in 2004 would continue into 2005. Regardless, if we assume that wages are not decreasing then the income per capita will be driven by employment. The employment data suggests improvements and thus higher income per capita in Rock and Jefferson Counties. Walworth incomes can be expected to hold steady, while we can likely anticipate income declines in Green and Lafayette Counties.
