State’s wages remain rock bottom

The average wage in Montana was the lowest in the nation in 2001, the third consecutive year at the bottom of a 22-year slide triggered by major changes in the state’s natural resource industries during the 1980s.

By BOB ANEZ
Associated Press Writer and Tribune Staff

The typical Montana job paid $24,936 last year, compared with a national average of $35,550, according to a new report Monday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. South Dakota was next lowest at $25,061.

In Cascade County, the average wage in 2001 was $25,016.

District of Columbia residents earned the most, an average of $55,286, far ahead of second place New York at $46,063.

Montana’s fall to the cellar of the country’s wage list began after 1979, when the state ranked 32nd. Montana had fallen to 41st five years later, to 47th in 1991 and 49th in 1996.

Montanans, who were paid an average of 90 cents for every dollar earned by the typical American in 1981, found themselves making just 70 percent of the national average two decades later.

But 1981 was just before the Anaconda Copper Co. shut down its Montana operations, a few years before technology began eliminating timber industry jobs and nearly a decade before the oil and gas slump arrived in the late 1980s, said Paul Polzin, director for the Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

"We lost a lot of high-paying jobs," he said Monday. "There were a lot of problems going on in Montana during the 1980s."

The answer, said Sen. Jeff Mangan, D-Great Falls, may be found in local economic development programs, research and development and a statewide jobs training program.

"I think where the Legislature focused its efforts in the past was on tax incentives — cut taxes and they will come," Mangan said. "We haven’t really looked at the foundation, and now some of us are starting to realize that. We need to go back to square one."

Mangan said he supports economic development efforts at both the local and state level.

"I think we need to strengthen those efforts, and I think there are ways to do that without spending a bunch of money on it," he said.

Unfortunately, low wages are not the only problem facing legislators as they head to Helena next Monday.

For Sen. John Cobb, R-Augusta, the state’s budget crisis is top priority. He admits that economic development and wages are not on his current agenda.

"I’m just trying to stabilize the budget mess we’re in right now," Cobb said.

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