Daily ranking: Greene and Westmoreland Counties Ascendant

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So first this is a repeat performance as Washington County is showing up again as one of the fastest job gainers in the nation in the 4th quarter of 2011.  #6 among all 'large' (top 323) counties in the US. A side note is that that if WashCo had not had that over the top growth last year, it would have dropped off the list for not being among the 323 largest counties in the US.  It is now solidly at #305. 

But this this new.. in the same ranking, Westmoreland County ranks even higher in terms of how fast the average weekly wage is going up. #5 across the nation.

One of those funny media things. Nobody noticed the Westmoreland factoid because the press release that went with this data only chose to highlight the counties which had the biggest decreases in wages (those nabobs!). There was no table of the counties with the fastest wage increases as was ranked for employment growth.   Go figure.

Anyway.  Here is a bigger factoid for us.   Below is a table of the latest (4th quarter 2011) data on average weekly wages along with the now complete 2011 annual averages.  For the first time in the annual data, likely ever, Greene County now has the highest average weekly wages of any county in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  So for those who might think geography does not matter any longer, wages of jobs located in Greene county are now more than 50% higher on average than jobs in brodering Fayette County.  The caveat of course that Greene county is the smallest in the region with ~40K folks these days.  Still, someone should send a note to the O-R.