What do you do for a living? How much do you make? Those are some of the first things people want to know about new acquaintances – but only the first of which they are likely to ask.
For folks working in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area, there are more than 400,000 answers to those questions, including 170 short order cooks ($22,330), 260 butchers ($38,580), 100 septic tank servicers ($57,080), 320 professional firefighters ($80,300), 1,010 industrial engineers ($101,770) and 340 radiologists (more than $239,200). Those are median salaries, meaning that half the people make more, while the other half make less.
The Morning Call took a look at annual detailed occupation and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics published in 2025 and compared it with similar data published 10 years prior to see how the area’s workforce is changing. The numbers cover the ABE Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is made up of Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties in Pennsylvania and Warren County, New Jersey…