Today is Equal Pay Day. If you go back to January 1, 2017 and move forward from there, a woman would need to work until today, April 10, 2018, to make what a man made by December 31, 2017. That is one form of comparison. I generated the following map from Census Bureau data for counties in North Dakota for median wage by sex.
The demographic transitions within North Dakota due to the Bakken oil boom are simply fascinating. These are part of my presentations at the North Dakota Demographics Conference. Some of this may be updated in the next few days because the Census Bureau released new data today that I am still working through even as I write this. Multitasking with writing blog posts and computer code is one of my skills. Ask JT about it on his radio show sometime.
So JT asked me about the existence of a labor shortage in Grand Forks. Essentially asking if there really is one or is it something we make up to explain some issue in local labor markets. Let’s first understand that this can change from time to time, month to month as it were. Let’s go to the data.
A closer look at recent sales tax data seems a logical follow-up to the long run view from last time. There are two things to note from this graph: 1) the negative trend is still clearly evident, and 2) the reduction in volatility from the twelve month rolling is clear.
The January sales tax collections data came out recently and I want to take a longer view of the data here. This typically means messier graphs because the time scale gets compressed. I will put up a post with a shorter timeline tomorrow. Why the longer timeline? I think it is necessary if we are going to try and interpret or understand the numbers we are currently seeing.
Continue reading Grand Forks Sales Tax Collections: A longer view