Ohioans’ average hourly pay has diminished about half a percentage point since 2007. It puts the state below the national average and behind neighbors Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where pay grew 3 percent.
But change is afoot in Ohio. Wages may be slipping overall, but higher-paying jobs are taking up a bigger share of the marketplace, especially in the Cleveland area, according to Federal Reserve researcher Joel Elvery.
"In the recession, what happened is there was a lot of job loss in lower-wage, lower-skilled occupations," Elvery said. "And then in the recovery, what's happened is there’s just been stronger gains in the high-skilled, higher-wage occupations."
One growing sector in the Cleveland area: doctors and other high-skilled healthcare workers. They’ve seen their wages rise.
But Elvery said hiring has flattened out in lower-skilled healthcare work. And those new higher-paying jobs haven’t made up for the overall losses the region suffered during the Great Recession.
