Entertainment is big business in Colorado – unless you’re handing out the peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jacks.
The best-paying Colorado employers? Professional sports teams.
The worst? Drive-in theaters.
As for the rest of Colorado’s 2.1 million payroll workers, they earned $40,285 on average in 2004, according to a Denver Post analysis of federal wage and employment data.
The state’s 1,345 professional athletes – and the “front offices” supporting them – scored big with average annual salaries of $217,618. Workers at the state’s five drive-in theaters reeled in a far more modest sum: $7,736 a year.
“It’s supply and demand,” said Jeffrey Zax, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Athletes earn astronomical salaries because the demand for their skills is high and the number of jobs available is low, Zax said. And because sports leagues have huge revenues and operate essentially as monopolies, “the workers will get a large chunk” of that money.
Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton, with an eight-year, $141.5 million contract extension signed before the 2002 season, was the top 2004 earner.
The more typical earner is Pablo Mastroeni, a midfielder for the Colorado Rapids.
The 29-year-old Broomfield resident is paid $225,000 a year to kick around a soccer ball for 20 hours a week. He is the team’s captain and one of its most respected players.
“I love what I do,” Mastroeni said. “Doing something you love and getting paid the kind of money you get paid is tremendous, so I have no gripes.”
But it wasn’t always like this.
During a three-month tryout with the Miami Fusion soccer team in 1998, Mastroeni struggled to get by because he wasn’t being paid.
“I was sleeping on an inflatable mattress for 3 months,” Mastroeni said. “I was calling my parents for money and food. That kind of picture stays in my mind. It’s my whole motivation.”
Mastroeni said the best aspects of his job are the travel and the time he gets to spend with his wife and 7-month-old son.
Some of the other top Colorado wage earners included workers at closed-end investment funds ($194,736), investment banking/stock brokerages ($142,612) and software reproduction ($102,558).
For low-wage workers, their pay is also a function of supply and demand.
“For people whose skills are limited, there’s not much demand and plenty of supply,” Zax said.
You can count dress-manufacturing workers ($8,316), crop harvesters ($10,913) and fast-food restaurant employees ($11,539) in that category.
One commonality between best-paid and worst-paid employees was the change in the paychecks from 2003 to 2004: They were smaller.
Colorado athletes saw a 12.4 percent decline in pay, the result of the National Hockey League’s canceled 2004-05 season. Fewer showtimes translated into fewer shifts for employees of drive-in theaters. They saw a 5.1 percent pay cut.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
