Exclusive: Where the living-wage jobs are (and aren't)
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The full spectrum of inequality within the U.S. is on display in an updated dataset released Friday by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP).
Why it matters: Boom towns like Denver, Nashville and Dallas are seeing very low levels of unemployment — in stark contrast to areas with large numbers of low-wage jobs, such as El Paso, Fresno and New Orleans.
How it works: LISEP's proprietary True Rate of Unemployment measures the proportion of workers looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — and who are unable to find one.
- Nationwide, the True Unemployment rate is 24.2%; it averaged 23% in 2023.
The big picture: The True Unemployment rate tends to track — but also be much higher than — the headline BLS unemployment rate.
- That's because the BLS rate excludes people who might be earning only a few dollars a week; LISEP, by contrast, counts as unemployed anybody earning less than $25,000 per year.
- The BLS, unlike LISEP, also excludes anybody who has stopped looking for work or is discouraged by a lack of jobs or the demands of child care.
Zoom in: Many rich towns have much lower True Unemployment than the national average.
- Bend, Oregon, is at 11%; Topeka, Kansas, is at 15%; Denver and Nashville are both at 16%.
- At those levels, the numbers are low enough that they could mostly include people so rich they don't need to work.
The other side: Pockets of painfully high unemployment remain.
- In the border town of Laredo, Texas, the True Unemployment rate is a shocking 52% — despite it being the busiest port in the country.
- In nearby McAllen, the rate is 48%, thanks in part to the fact that some 35% of the over-25 population doesn't have a high school diploma.
- Other high-unemployment cities include El Paso (32%), Fresno (31%), and New Orleans (28%).
Between the lines: Within Texas, the range is huge — while the border towns of Laredo and El Paso struggle, the Dallas-Forth Worth area is much better than the national average, at 20%. And in oil-rich Odessa, the rate is just 17%.
What they're saying: "Local communities investing in infrastructure, housing, and future-oriented industries consistently outperform those more reliant on low-wage jobs," says LISEP founder Gene Ludwig.
The bottom line: There are plenty of good jobs in America — but they're not evenly distributed.
