Appendix g

Qualifying Wage Thresholds, Project Completion Date, Maintenance Period

Definitions
“Average county wage” means the average the department calculates quarterly using the most current four quarters of wage and employment information as provided in the Quarterly Covered Wage and Employment Data report as provided by Iowa Workforce Development, audit and analysis section.  Agricultural/mining and governmental employment categories are deleted in compiling the wage information.

“Average regional wage” means the wage calculated annually by the Department using a methodology in which each particular county is considered to be a geographic center of a larger economic region.  The wage threshold for the central county is calculated using the average wage of that county, plus each adjoining Iowa county, so that the resulting figure reflects a regional average that is representative of the true labor market area.  When the average regional wage is calculated, the greatest importance is given to the central county by “weighting” it by a factor of four, compared to a weighting of one for each of the other adjoining counties.  The central county is given the greatest importance in the calculation because most of the employees in that central county will come from that same county, as compared to commuters from other adjoining counties.