Regional Federal Reserve banks update online tool to include wage data for Albuquerque area

Maybe you’re a dental assistant making $18.54 an hour in Albuquerque and are looking for a new, higher-paying job with the skills you already have. Then you find a tool that shows dental hygienists in the area are making just over $46 an hour.

That’s a possibility for those living and working in New Mexico’s largest metro now that the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia and Cleveland have updated their online tool, the Occupational Mobility Explorer, to include wage data for the Albuquerque area.

The tool, launched in 2020, covers more than 600 job titles in 500 regions across the country. Its goal is to ultimately help people find higher-paying jobs using the skills they already have, said Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland spokesman Chuck Soder.

Kyle Fee, policy adviser for the Fed, said the two regional Fed banks conducted focus groups to get users’ senses of how the tool could be improved. In doing so, a suggestion from the groups’ members was to expand the geographic areas the tool covers, Fee said.

“Albuquerque, in addition to hundreds of other regions, was added in response to this feedback to cover more areas of the United States,” he added.

The tool has a wide-ranging list of job titles to choose from, including compliance officers, bartenders, airline pilots, pharmacists, writers and authors, health care and social workers and hundreds of others.

Users can select their current metro area or non-metro area before selecting an occupation. When users select that occupation, they have the option to choose it as either their current occupation or destination occupation for comparables.

That allows users to then see a list of up to 10 roles with similar skills, median wages, whether the jobs require a degree and the projected growth for each job over a decade.

Fee noted that the tool could also be helpful for career counselors and employers.

“All too often, incredible talent is being overlooked because employers are hiring for credentials or titles over skills,” Fee said. “Skills-based hiring can be a key element in the economic mobility of workers while providing employers with a broader pool of talent.”

The Occupational Mobility Explorer tool can be found at philadelphiafed.org in the “surveys & data” tab.