Comparing occupational wages with family budgets reveals a stark affordability gap in our economy: Far too many jobs are in occupations with pay too low for people to make ends meet.
More than 30% of Washington state’s jobs are in occupations where the median wage is too low to meet a basic budget overall — that’s for households comprised of one or two adults, with or without children. (The median wage is the midpoint of wages in an occupation, where half of workers earn more and half earn less – you can think of a median wage as a typical wage.)
And for families with children in our state, the gap between what jobs pay and what it takes to get by is even larger: more than half of jobs are in occupations with a typical wage that won’t support a basic family budget — a modest but adequate lifestyle with decent housing, good food, high-quality child care, transportation, health care, and life’s other necessities.
What’s worse: As bad as Washington’s numbers are, we’re doing better than every other state in the nation but one (North Dakota). In 30 states, at least 40% of jobs are in occupations with a median wage too low for a basic family budget overall — and that number rises to 39 states for families with children.
Nationally, the gap between productivity and a typical worker’s compensation has increased dramatically since 1979. We’ve minted nearly 1,000 billionaires while wages for working people have failed to keep pace with the cost of daily life. The acute affordability crisis we’re facing isn’t going to get better on its own; in fact, it proves the false promise of trickle-down economics.
Likewise, even as Washington’s economy has grown over the past 30 years, our state budgets have failed to pay forward the benefits. It’s time for that to change. Washington’s elected leaders and agency officials need to focus public policies, especially our public investments, in ways that center the interests of lower-paid workers, children, students, and other marginalized populations. That means finding ways to drive down the costs of daily life and ensure wages keep up.
By the numbers
Percent of Washington state jobs in occupations with a typical wage sufficient for a basic budget:
for all households (1- or 2-adult, with or without kids)
for a 1- or 2-adult household with kids
for a 1- or 2-adult household without kids
Upcoming
In the coming months, we’ll publish a series of Affordability Reports that examine the price of four essential household items: housing, child care, health care, and food. Sign up to be the first to receive this report.
Methodology for this article
For each metropolitan area, we identify jobs in occupations where the median annual wage is sufficient to meet a basic family budget for 10 family types: one or two adults (working full-time) with zero to four children. Family budget estimates come from the Economic Policy Institute, and occupational wages and employment estimates come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Results are aggregated to the state level, with metropolitan areas weighted by their total employment.
State-level results are then weighted according to the prevalence of each family type, using the 2024 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (5-year) accessed through IPUMS USA. To derive these weights, we identify distinct family/budget units within households using reported relationships to group spouses or partners and their children, rather than treating every household as a single family; this accounts for households containing multiple families. Census household sampling weights are used to estimate each family type’s relative prevalence within a state. Family types outside the 10 categories are excluded, and the remaining weights are adjusted to total 100%.
The Adults Only measure combines the (two) family types without children; Adults with Children combines the (eight) family types with children; and Overall combines all 10 family types. Each measure is weighted according to the relative prevalence of the family types it includes.