Updated August 2026 · Next update November 2026 · Every number links to its source
Is Spokane attracting the kind of employers that raise wages?
Off track
Payrolls shrank by 2,900 jobs over the past year, and nearly all the growth that remains is in one sector.
Eight measures this quarter:
1 strong4 mixed3 weak
The overall call follows a rule set before the reading, not a feeling: off track when weak measures outnumber strong ones, mixed when they tie, on track when strong outnumber weak. Three weak against one strong. There is no letter grade here because the eight measures are neither equally important nor independent, and a GPA would imply a precision this data doesn’t have. How the grades work.
People keep arriving. The employers that pay well don’t.
−2,900
jobs lost across Spokane County over the past year
1 sector
health care carries nearly all the growth that is left
+1.2%
city spending growth, against a long-run normal of 4 to 5%
People ↑→Employers ↓→Paychecks →→Spending ↓→Storefronts →Each arrow is a graded measure below. The chain breaks at employers, and everything downstream of the break sags.
Read the longer explanation
If you live here, you’ve seen the puzzle pieces without the box top. Ground-floor spaces sit empty on Monroe while apartments rise around them. New commercial construction has slowed to a trickle. Help-wanted signs everywhere, yet the career-grade jobs always seem to be somewhere else.
None of it is random. Storefronts stay dark because spending in the city is growing at a quarter of its normal pace. Spending lags because the region shed jobs this year, and the jobs it is creating cluster in one sector. And when wage-raising employers are scarce, talented people commute, take remote jobs with out-of-town firms, or leave for cities that have them. The eight numbers below are that story, measured. The employer calculator lets you test the way out for yourself.
The score
Eight measures, graded from public data
Tap any measure for the benchmark comparison, why it matters, and the sources. Figures cover Spokane County or the Spokane metro (which includes Stevens County) unless the measure says City of Spokane.
WeakJob growth−2,900 jobs Spokane County, year over yearPayrolls fell 1.1% over the year
Spokane County payrolls fell 1.1% from June 2025 to June 2026. In 2026 the metro has added an average of 58 jobs a month, the weakest pace since 2020.
5-yr average+410/mo
2025+133/mo
2026+58/mo
Average jobs added per month, Spokane metro
Why it matters: this is the bottom line. A region attracting employers adds jobs faster than it loses them. Right now Spokane is going backwards.
WeakWho’s actually hiring1 sector drives nearly all growthHealth care carries the load. Finance shed 12%.
Health care added about 5,900 jobs in five years (+13%). Finance and insurance shed 12% of its jobs in the same window. Manufacturing is hoping for stabilization, not growth.
Health care+13%
Finance & insurance−12%
Five-year job change by sector, Spokane County
Why it matters: health care serves the people already here. Employers that raise a region’s wages sell to the outside world (manufacturing, software, professional services) and bring new money in. Those are the ones not showing up, and leaning on one sector is a risk in itself.
MixedUnemployment (read with care)3.8% Spokane County, June 2026Beats the U.S. and Washington, over a shrinking labor pool
Beats Washington (4.7%) and the U.S. (4.4%). But this number flatters us: it counts only people actively looking, and Spokane’s labor force participation lags the national rate, with retirements shrinking the pool faster than new workers replace it. A low rate over a shrinking base is not strength.
Spokane3.8%
U.S.4.4%
Washington4.7%
Unemployment rate, June 2026. Shorter bar is better.
Why it matters: this is the number politicians reach for, so it stays on the board, graded honestly. The truer measure is the share of working-age adults actually holding jobs, which Spokane’s own data project tracks. That becomes this card in November.
MixedPaychecks$32.96/hr vs. $33.54 U.S. average, Spokane metroNearly at parity with the U.S., but income growth is falling behind
Spokane wages have nearly reached the national average. But per-person income grew 4.9% in 2024 while the U.S. grew 6.6%, so the gap with the rest of the country widened again.
Spokane$32.96
U.S.$33.54
Average hourly wage, May 2025
Why it matters: wage level is the clearest test of employer quality. Parity with the U.S. average is real progress. Losing ground on income growth says the progress isn’t compounding.
MixedIncomes$44,107 per person, Spokane County, 2024Below the U.S., and just 80% of Washington
Below the U.S. ($45,256) and just 80% of Washington ($55,177), and it grew 4.9% in 2024 while the nation grew 6.6%, so the gap widened. Household income did top the U.S. median for the first time ($86,206 vs. about $81,400), but economists can’t fully explain that one-year jump and suspect federal transfer payments, so it doesn’t carry a grade on its own.
Spokane$44.1k
U.S.$45.3k
Washington$55.2k
Per-person income, 2024
Why it matters: per-person income is the harder test because transfers and household size can’t juice it. In November this card adds the cleanest read on employer quality: median earnings of full-time, year-round workers (Census table S2001).
WeakSpending in the city+1.2% City of Spokane, taxable retail sales, Q4 2024 (latest city figure)Against a long-run normal of 4 to 5%
The newest county reading (Q2 2025) grew 2.8% against the state’s 3.4%, and the long-run normal is 4–5%. In the latest city-level release, Spokane grew just 1.2% while its own county grew 3.1%. County sales tax receipts have grown about 1% against a two-decade average of 4%.
City (Q4 ’24)+1.2%
County (Q2 ’25)+2.8%
State (Q2 ’25)+3.4%
Long-run norm4–5%
Taxable retail sales growth, year over year, latest reading per geography
Why it matters: this is where jobs and wages become street life. When spending growth in the city runs at a quarter of its historical pace, storefronts stay dark no matter what gets built.
MixedStorefronts5.3% retail vacancy, Spokane metro, Q2 2026Flat year over year, with little new construction
Flat year over year. Only about 49,000 sq ft of retail is under construction, far below the decade average. Downtown storefronts lag because daytime office workers never fully returned; Spokane Valley sits at a healthy 4–5%.
Why it matters: developers aren’t refusing to build ground-floor retail out of stubbornness. They’re reading the same demand numbers on this page. Fill the jobs and the wages, and the storefronts follow.
StrongPeople~556,000 county residents, growingGrowing faster than the state and the country
Spokane grew slightly faster than both the state and the country last year, and the largest age group is 25 to 34.
Why it matters: workers are choosing Spokane before the employers do. That’s the region’s strongest card, and it’s perishable. Working-age people who can’t find career-grade jobs here eventually leave for them.
Five hundred jobs is five hundred jobs, until you ask what kind. Jobs at companies that sell to the outside world bring new money in, and that money becomes customers for everyone else.
500 software jobs
900 to 1,900
additional local jobs, on top of the 500
500 retail jobs
0 to 100
additional local jobs, on top of the 500
The same 500 hires either build a second wave or don’t.
Ranges, never point estimates. They come from published local-multiplier research (Moretti, capped downward per Bartik and the Upjohn Institute) and are deliberately widened. This illustrates a mechanism. It is not a forecast.
Everything on this page is one machine. Schools and in-migration supply talent, employers turn talent into paychecks, paychecks become customers, customers become storefronts and tax base, and the tax base funds the services that make people and companies want to stay. Each turn makes the next one easier. Unless a gear is missing.
The dots are Spokane’s current grades from the ledger above. Green where people enter the wheel, red exactly where the employers should be, and the red bleeding downstream. The city’s job isn’t to spin every gear. It’s to fix the one that’s missing.
Who can change it
Nobody moves these numbers alone
The fairest criticism of any scorecard is that outcomes are co-produced, so blaming one office is cheap. Agreed. So here is the same machine with name tags: each actor, the levers only they hold, and where things stand. Status lines follow the same rule as grades. Tied to a measure above, tied to a source, or stated as an open question. Open questions are invitations. Send the data and it gets linked.
City of Spokane
Permitting speed and predictability. Zoning that keeps employment land ready to build. Downtown safety. Business fees. The council’s attention.
OpenThe three asks below are unanswered. November’s attention audit will measure the attention lever directly.
The regional recruiters
Spokane County and Greater Spokane Inc. hold the actual sales operation: target sectors, site readiness, incentive coordination, and the pitch employers hear.
OpenIf a target-sector list and public pipeline report exist, send them and this page will link them prominently.
Higher education
Gonzaga, Whitworth, EWU, WSU Spokane, the UW–GU medical partnership and the community colleges hold degree production, internship pipelines, and turning research into companies.
OpenNursing retention is reported and strong. For engineering, computing and business, no local institution publishes a stay-in-region rate we could find.
Anchor employers
Itron, Kaiser Aluminum, Providence, MultiCare, Avista and peers hold the decision Boise teaches: expand here or somewhere else. Also internship seats and supplier development.
WeakMeasured by the “Who’s actually hiring” measure above, currently weak.
The state of Washington
Tax structure, incentives, infrastructure, higher-ed funding east of the Cascades, and the wage floor that already lifted Spokane’s hourly pay to near the national average.
Not gradedThis page tracks regional outcomes rather than Olympia. The lever is real, and this region’s legislators pull it.
Residents, including this page
Attention, votes, meeting rooms, and corrections. On track looks like showing up when the levers above get discussed.
LiveYou’re reading the lever.
The longer version, including what city hall does and doesn’t control
No mayor recruits a manufacturer alone, and this scorecard doesn’t pretend otherwise. Employer attraction runs through Greater Spokane Inc., the county, the state, and forces nobody local controls. But the city holds real levers: how fast and predictably it permits, whether zoned land is actually ready to build on, whether downtown feels safe enough for employers to bring people back, what it charges businesses to operate, and where the council spends its attention.
The grades above measure the region’s results. The question for city hall is simpler: are your levers pulled toward these numbers, or toward something else? When the agenda majors on the minors, this page is the reminder of what the majors are.
On higher education, the detail behind the status. The number gets published exactly where it shines. SCC reports 99% of its nursing graduates staying in the Spokane area, and Gonzaga and EWU report similar strength in nursing. For engineering, computing, and business, the fields the missing employers hire, no local institution publishes a stay-in-region rate we could find. The regional indicator called “retention” measures whether students stay enrolled, not whether graduates stay home. The first institution to publish program-level retention gets celebrated at the top of this page.
On anchor employers. Cheap power drawing data-center inquiries shows the raw pull exists. The question is whether it converts into employers that hire broadly.
It’s been done
Four cities that looked like Spokane and turned it around
Mid-size, inland, easy to overlook. None of them got lucky. Each picked an asset it already had, built a sales operation around it, and kept at it for a decade.
BoiseGrew its own anchorMicron’s hometown expansion grew from $15B to roughly $50B
Instead of only chasing strangers, Idaho helped its homegrown employer expand at home. Micron is building leading-edge memory fabs at its Boise headquarters, an investment that started at $15 billion (the largest private investment in state history) and has grown to roughly $50 billion, with about 17,000 Idaho jobs tied to it and suppliers like Lam Research opening offices behind it. Retention is recruitment.
Spokane’s version of the asset: the anchors already here, like Itron and Kaiser Aluminum, whose next expansion has to want to happen here.
ChattanoogaWent and won oneVolkswagen’s plant beat its own projections: 12,400+ jobs by 2012
A mid-size inland city once labeled America’s dirtiest recruited Volkswagen’s $1 billion plant in 2008. A University of Tennessee study later found it beat its own job projections, with more than 12,400 direct and indirect jobs by 2012, and VW-related activity now supports roughly 17,000 Tennessee jobs. The city also built the country’s first citywide gigabit network to give employers a concrete reason to look.
Spokane’s version of the asset: cheap, reliable power that’s already drawing data-center inquiries. The job is converting that pull into employers that hire broadly, not just server halls.
HuntsvilleSold an existing asset relentlesslyRedstone Arsenal now employs 42,000+ and drives half the metro economy
Redstone Arsenal now employs over 42,000 people and drives half the metro’s economy. The region kept selling it until the FBI made Redstone its unofficial second headquarters, on a path toward thousands of employees, with Space Command following.
Spokane’s version of the asset: Fairchild AFB and a health-sciences campus with two medical schools, both underused as recruitment platforms today.
PittsburghCommercialized its research80+ robotics companies along a two-mile corridor, out of university research
The purest answer to “aren’t we too dependent on health care?” After steel collapsed and the city lost half its population, leaders deliberately rebuilt around universities and hospitals, then converted that base into something bigger: Carnegie Mellon’s research became the country’s largest concentration of robotics work, with more than 80 robotics companies along a two-mile corridor.
The honest caveat: Pittsburgh is several times Spokane’s size and the turnaround took decades, with job quality recovering long before headcount did. The lesson survives the caveat: a health-and-universities economy is a launchpad if the region builds a research-to-company pipeline on top of it.
Spokane’s version of the asset: two medical schools and a health-sciences campus that could seed med-tech the way Carnegie Mellon seeded robotics.
The pattern across all four: a named asset, a public plan, and years of unglamorous follow-through. Nothing on that list requires luck, size, or a coastline.
What we’re asking
Not a policy. A posture.
Three commitments any mayor or council member could make tomorrow.
Adopt a scoreboard.
These eight measures or better ones. Report against them in public, on a schedule, the way the city already reports on potholes and permits.
Publish the plan.
Which sectors, which assets, who owns recruitment, and what the targets are. If that plan already exists, send the link and this page will feature it.
Show the balance.
Most city business has nothing to do with attracting employers, and shouldn’t. But when major money and attention get allocated, say out loud what each choice does for the numbers on this page. Starting with the November update, this scorecard will count how much of the council’s public agenda over the past year touched employer attraction at all. It’s public record.
And one ask beyond city hall.
To the region’s colleges and universities: publish where your graduates go, by program. You already report it for nursing, where the story is great. The share of engineering, computing, and business graduates who stay is the single number this whole system turns on, and today nobody reports it. First institution to publish gets the green ink.
And a commitment back: this scorecard isn’t rooting for anyone to fail. The quarter these numbers improve, the top of this page will say so, in green, with credit to whoever moved them.
The receipts
Argue with us
Every number above links to its source, and the full methodology covers the rubric, the limitations, and what this data can and can’t tell you. Corrections are welcome and get posted.
How the grades work
Strong means Spokane beats its benchmark (the U.S. or Washington) or is clearly improving. Mixed means near benchmark or mixed signals. Weak means below benchmark and not improving. Grades are judgment calls made in public: every number links to its source, and corrections are welcome and will be posted.
The overall call at the top follows a rule set before the reading: off track when weak measures outnumber strong ones, mixed when they tie, on track when strong outnumber weak. There is deliberately no letter grade, because the eight measures are neither equally important nor independent of each other, and averaging them would imply a precision this data doesn’t have.
All data covers Spokane County or the Spokane metro unless noted, because that’s the level where reliable public employment data exists. Updated quarterly, by hand.
Coming in future updates
Four measures worth adding: new business applications per resident (Census Business Formation Statistics), the city’s median permit turnaround time (a lever the city fully controls), storefront vacancy by corridor so Monroe, Garland, and Division get their own lines instead of hiding inside a metro average, and the attention audit described above: the share of the council’s public agenda that touched employer attraction at all. A fifth arrives when institutions publish or provide it: graduate retention in the region, by school and program.
