The Phoenix metro and Tucson both rank in the bottom half in a new measure of earning power for local employees.
The typical worker in the Phoenix area earned less than $36,000, while in Tucson, average annual earnings were even lower at less than $30,000 last year — with a big gap between men and women earners in the Valley — according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey, released this fall.
Earnings are defined as wages, salaries and self-employment income derived from work.
They are not the same as income, which encompasses a much broader range of 42 different sources of money, including interest, pensions, dividends, credits and government assistance. (Earnings are included as one of those 42 components of income.)
