Wages are rising in Missouri and Kansas, but job growth is slowing, recently released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. Unemployment is also increasing in both states, although it remains at lower rates than the national average.
The new local data comes amid economic angst over job growth and unemployment at the national level. That may be why the bureau heavily emphasized wage gains in its data release summary Wednesday.
“Among the 369 largest counties, 357 had over-the-year increases in average weekly wages,” it wrote. “In the first quarter of 2024, average weekly wages for the nation increased to $1,527, a 4.2-percent increase over (last) year.”
Here’s a closer look at how Kansas City’s jobs, wages and unemployment rates have changed since the pandemic began in 2020.
Job growth is slowing in the Kansas City area
The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures changes in employment by tallying how many people are employed in a given geographic area each month and averaging those numbers over three months for quarterly totals.
While the number of people employed tends to go up over time as populations and job opportunities increase, the speed at which this number rises can offer a glimpse into the employment situation in the area.
This metric is commonly called job growth. To account for seasonal fluctuations in employment, such as temporary positions that appear around the holidays, quarterly job growth is calculated by comparing each quarter’s job numbers to those in the same quarter of the previous year.
In Missouri and Kansas, job growth rates recorded since the beginning of 2020 show a significant decline at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, after which they largely bounced back into positive rates in the second quarter of 2021 as vaccines became widely available.
But since then, job growth has slowed — while it is still in the positive realm, employment increases cooled to just 1% in Missouri and 0.7% in Kansas in the first quarter of this year. That’s the lowest rate seen in either state since the first year of the pandemic.
A breakdown by the larger counties in the Kansas City area offers a more localized look at job growth in the metro.
For instance, while Wyandotte County took longer to bounce back from the pandemic-era downturn in employment gains, it reached a job growth rate of 5.5% in the third quarter of 2022 — higher than any other area county has since the pandemic began. But this growth didn’t last — in the second half of last year, employment barely grew at all, and it reached only 0.6% in the first quarter of this year.
Jackson County, on the other hand, has shown a much steadier return to pre-pandemic job growth numbers. Its job growth has remained mostly between 1% and 2% since the beginning of 2022, indicating a more sustainable recovery from 2020’s employment downturn.
Unemployment is rising, but lower than national rates
In July, nationwide unemployment rose to 4.3%. Missouri was close behind with 3.8% unemployment, while Kansas had 3.2% unemployment.
While both states’ unemployment rates are lower than the national average, they are still above where they were last July . Missouri had 3.1% unemployment in July 2023, and Kansas had just 2.6%.
Unemployment in Kansas City rose from 3.5% in May to 3.8% in June — still lower than Missouri’s overall employment rate of 4.2% that month, but higher than unemployment rates in 2023. Last June, just 3% of Kansas City’s labor force was unemployed. City-level data isn’t available yet for July.
Wages are increasing in Missouri and Kansas
While wages fluctuate seasonally in both Missouri and Kansas, they have followed an upward trajectory since the beginning of 2020.
As of the first quarter of this year, Missourians earned an average of $1,269 per week, while Kansans earned $1,199 on average. Both these averages were higher than the national average weekly wage of $1,139 for the first quarter of 2024.
Average weekly wages are steadily higher in Missouri than they are in Kansas by around $50 to $100. They are calculated by dividing the total quarterly wages by the number of people employed in that geographical area for the quarter. This result is then divided by 13, since each quarter contains 13 weeks.
These average weekly wages include all money earned, including tips, bonuses and the value of reimbursables like meals and travel.
Johnson County has the highest weekly wages of the four major counties in the Kansas City area with an average of $1,538 in the first quarter of this year, while Clay County has the lowest at $1,255.
Over the past four years, Jackson and Johnson counties have had consistently higher average weekly wages than Wyandotte and Clay counties. Platte County is not included in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data for large counties because of its smaller population.
Do you have more questions about labor or wages in the Kansas City area? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com .
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