Four counties, adjoining, roughly two hours end to end. If wages were set by geography they would be close to identical. They are not, and the gap between them explains a good deal about why the housing markets here diverged the way they did.
In 2024 Q1, the average weekly wage across covered employment ran from $1,036 in Franklin County to $1,233 in Hampden County. That is a difference of $197 a week, or roughly $10,269 over a year, for the average job.
The region as a whole holds 348,242 covered jobs across 31,466 establishments, at an average of $1,209 a week.
One County Holds Half The Work
Hampden County accounts for 58% of all covered employment in Western Massachusetts, with 200,662 jobs. That is the Springfield metropolitan area, and it is the gravitational centre of the regional labour market whether or not you live in it.
It is also why the commuting patterns look the way they do. In the median town of the 101, only about seven percent of working residents have a job in their own town, and where everybody actually goes resolves into a small number of destinations dominated by that county.
Wages Against Houses, Which Is The Comparison That Matters
Put the wage column beside the housing column in the table below and the region's central tension appears immediately.
The county with the highest median home value is not the county with the highest wages. Berkshire County's housing is priced substantially by buyers whose income is earned in New York and Boston, which is what a weekend market does, and the scale of that market here is larger than most people assume. Local wages have very little to do with what those houses cost.
That is the mechanism behind a fact that puzzles people about this region: housing is inexpensive by Massachusetts standards and a great many households are still stretched. Cheap housing and housing people cannot carry are not opposites when wages fall further than prices did, and how many households here are past the thirty percent line is the measured version of it.
Three Things This Number Is Not
Before the table, the limits, because this figure gets quoted carelessly.
- It is an average, not a median. Total wages divided by total jobs. A small number of very high earners pulls it above what a typical worker takes home, and the source carries no distribution to correct with. Read it as a comparison between counties rather than as a salary you should expect.
- It is one quarter, and a distorting one. The first quarter carries annual bonuses in the sectors that pay them, so a weekly figure from it runs high against the full year. Multiplying it by fifty-two overstates annual pay, which is exactly why we have not done that anywhere on this page.
- It is covered employment only. Jobs covered by unemployment insurance. The self-employed, most farm labour and a good deal of contract work sit outside it, and in a rural region that is a real gap rather than a technicality.
Every County, 2024 Q1
Employment and Wages by County, 2024 Q1
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
Covered jobs, establishments and average weekly wage from unemployment insurance filings, which are a near-census of covered employment rather than a sample survey. The wage is total quarterly wages divided by covered jobs and by thirteen weeks. Median home value is the median of the county's town-level median single-family assessments, shown for comparison.
| County | Covered Jobs | Establishments | Average Jobs per Site | Average Weekly Wage | Median Home Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hampden | 200,662 | 18,611 | 10.8 | $1,233 | $332,300 |
| Berkshire | 56,999 | 5,404 | 10.5 | $1,229 | $396,250 |
| Hampshire | 65,462 | 4,890 | 13.4 | $1,184 | $366,500 |
| Franklin | 25,119 | 2,561 | 9.8 | $1,036 | $302,100 |
What These Columns Mean
- County
- One of the four western counties.
- Covered Jobs
- Jobs covered by unemployment insurance. The self-employed, most farm labour and some contract work sit outside this count.
- Establishments
- Separate business locations filing in the county, not companies. One firm with three sites files three times.
- Average Jobs per Site
- Covered jobs divided by establishments. A rough measure of whether a county's employment sits in large workplaces or small ones.
- Average Weekly Wage
- Total wages in the quarter divided by covered jobs and by thirteen weeks. An average rather than a median, so higher earners pull it up, and this quarter carries annual bonuses in the sectors that pay them.
- Median Home Value
- The median of the county's town-level median single-family assessments, for comparison against the wage column.
Cite: RE413. “Employment and Wages by County, 2024 Q1.” Updated August 5, 2026. https://www.re413.com/news/western-mass-jobs-and-wages/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
If You Are Moving Here For Work
The practical read is that this is one labour market with four wage levels and a single dominant centre. Where you live and where you earn are separable in a way they are not in a large city, and that separation is the actual opportunity here: earn in the valley, live where you can afford to, and accept the drive.
What that costs is the thing to price honestly. A cheaper house forty minutes out carries a second car, the fuel and several hundred hours a year. Our live near work tool maps the towns inside a real commute of 106 places people actually work here, which is the right way round to do this: fix the job, then find the towns.
And if the job can be done from a spare room, the calculation changes completely, at which point the binding constraint is not the commute but what the broadband record actually shows in the town you are considering.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: covered employment, establishment counts and total quarterly wages by county. Figures through 2024 Q1.
- MassGIS standardized assessors' parcels. Median single-family assessed values, aggregated to county for the housing comparison.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.