City Club welcomes Federal Reserve guest speaker

The City Club of Idaho Falls hosts a conference Thursday to discuss employment, wages, income inequality and the disability policy.

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Associate Director of Research Mary Daly, addressed the crowd and presented a PowerPoint looking at employment, wages, income inequality, and the disability policy.

Daly said the aging population contributes to the economy.

“The baby boom is going to slow wage growth for a long time because we are bringing out high wage workers and they’re moving out of the wage growth numbers, so that just slows wages as they move out of the economy,” Daly said.

One point Daly touched on was the female job sector growing in the field of health care and education.

“The really hot sector, which happens to be dominated by females. We’ll see faster wage growth. So right now we see wage growth among women more generally catching up or exceeding because women will be predominately working in the health care sector,” Daly said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Idaho’s employment grew 3.8 percent from Oct. 2014 to Oct. 2015.

To learn more about economic growth in Idaho, visit dfm.idaho.gov.