Texas Oil Town Odessa Now Among USA Cities With Highest Wages

Texas oil town Odessa and Denver joined the top 10 US metropolitan areas with the highest weekly wages over the past year.

San Jose, San Francisco and Midland, Texas, — Odessa’s bigger sister in the Permian Basin — remained first, second and third, respectively, in October. But while private weekly earnings rose in San Jose and Midland, they fell in San Francisco compared with a year ago.

Wages and local economies in oil towns are prone to swings tied to energy markets. During the pandemic recovery, Midland faced higher inflation than the rest of the country and acute labor shortages. It helped boost average earnings in the metro, and in Odessa, which is about 20 miles away.

Denver also made its way into the top 10 — it was 11th in October 2023. However, both Huntsville, Alabama, and Trenton, New Jersey, saw a decline in average weekly earnings over the past year and fell out of the top ranking, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Metro Jobless Rates

Las Vegas had the highest unemployment rate in the US among large metro areas, at 5.8% compared with the 4.1% national average, BLS data also show. Jobless rates were higher in October from a year earlier in 272 of the 389 metropolitan areas covered by the government agency, lower in 98 metros, and unchanged in 19.

The unemployment data is based on where people live rather than where they work. Two South Dakota metros had the lowest jobless rates of the country last month — Sioux Falls at just 1.5% and Rapid City at 1.6%. The highest rate in the nation was in El Centro, a southeastern California town near the Mexico border, where close to one in five people are unemployed.

Kokomo, Indiana, home of auto factories, saw a 4.4 percentage point rise in jobless rate from a year earlier, the biggest increase in the nation. The rate also climbed by 4.4 points in Asheville, North Carolina, reflecting the severe damage caused by a recent hurricane.

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