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This chart is interesting, but even more interesting when put in the context of total firms/employees/wages, which show what's going on. A short thread. https://twitter.com/wineecon/status/1285181144091295749
First, let's look at firms. Both have grown tremendously, but breweries have closed the gap relative to wineries over this time period.
A reminder that breweries doesn't include brewpubs, or it would have grown more (and wineries doesn't cover everyone who is selling wine).
A reminder that breweries doesn't include brewpubs, or it would have grown more (and wineries doesn't cover everyone who is selling wine).
Next, we can look at total employment, which has grown strongly during this period, particularly for breweries, in line with the number of firms. Here we see breweries overtake wineries in jobs.
So what's going on is not breweries paying their existing workers less, but a shift in the types of firms and who they employ. We've gone from fewer larger breweries (and wineries) to more smaller firms with more service workers as part of their employment.
Finally, here are total wages. So an individual brewery worker makes less on average than they did in 2006, but workers in general are taking home more. Some of this is a shift in distribution, and some of this is that small breweries capture more of the services value chain.
