Several years into the rebuilding after an economic earthquake, the state is doing well, by some measures. And the Seattle area? It’s booming, with a thriving tech sector driving the growth and unemployment reaching a seven-year low.
The state, as well as King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, has recovered the number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. But inequality is widening.
The economic expansion has favored those who were already better off to begin with. In the Seattle area, the top 5 percent of households — those making at least $230,000 in 2007 — saw their earnings fully recover to prerecession levels. Meanwhile, the group earning less than $32,500 when the recession started, the bottom 20 percent, saw their incomes decline further.
Most of the jobs lost in the state between 2007 and 2013 paid less than $30 an hour, while the number of jobs paying $54 or more an hour saw big gains. That contrast was even more stark in King County, where jobs paying $54 or more an hour have soared.
