From the resident-run scorecard that grades Spokane’s economy four times a year

Is Spokane a good place to live?

Honest numbers for anyone deciding whether to move here, stay here, or come home. Every figure on this page links to a public source, and the page is refreshed each quarter with the scorecard.

The short answer

Spokane is a good place to live on a good paycheck. The hard part is getting that paycheck here. That is the whole story of this page.

People keep choosing Spokane. The county has grown to about 556,000 residents, and growth is the strongest number on the region’s scorecard. The paychecks are the harder story. This scorecard currently grades the region off track: one measure strong, four mixed, three weak.

What people earn here

The average wage in the Spokane metro is $32.96 an hour (May 2025, Spokane metro: Spokane County plus Stevens County). That is close to the national average, and it took a decade of climbing to get there. BLS Occupational Employment and Wages.
Average pay per worker in Spokane County was $68,949 in 2025. BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and the data is downloadable here.
Income per person in Spokane County was $44,107 in 2024. That is 97% of the U.S. figure ($45,256) and 80% of Washington’s ($55,177). Census ACS 2024 via Census Reporter.
Median household income was $86,205 in 2024, above the U.S. median ($81,604) for the first time. Economists caution that federal transfer payments may explain part of that one-year jump. Census ACS 2024; Spokane Public Radio.

What jobs there are

Spokane County had 243,704 jobs in 2025, counted from unemployment insurance records. But the region lost about 2,900 jobs from mid 2025 to mid 2026. BLS QCEW; WA Employment Security Dept.
Unemployment was 3.8% in June 2026, better than the U.S. rate. The scorecard notes that this number flatters the region, because it counts only people actively looking. WA ESD, Spokane County profile.
Two sectors carry 3 in 4 net new jobs since 2019: health care (+6,159) and transportation and warehousing (+5,059). Health care alone is now 21.3% of all county jobs. Manufacturing, finance, information and retail all shrank. The sector-by-sector data, from BLS QCEW.

Plainly: if you work in health care, logistics, or the building trades, Spokane is hiring. If you work in tech, finance, media, or manufacturing, the county shed those jobs over the same stretch.

What it costs

The median owner-occupied home in Spokane County was worth $436,100 in 2024, about 20 percent above the national median of $360,600. Census ACS 2024 via Census Reporter.
Washington has no state income tax. It leans on sales and other taxes instead, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranks the state 49th out of 50 for how much more of their income lower earners hand over than higher earners do. A high salary keeps more of itself here. A modest one does not. ITEP, Who Pays.
The state minimum wage is $17.13 an hour in 2026, among the highest in the country. That raises the floor under the lowest-paid work. WA Dept. of Labor & Industries.
The county’s poverty rate, 10.6% in 2024, runs a bit below the nation’s 12.2%. Census ACS 2024.

The honest math

Pay near the national average. Houses about 20 percent above it. Incomes at 80 cents on Washington’s dollar.

If you arrive with a strong salary, or bring one with you, the math works, and what people love about this place is real: the river, the lake summers, the neighborhoods, the pace. If you are starting out or earning a typical local wage, the math is the squeeze, and it is why so many graduates leave. That mismatch, more than any single number, is the reason this scorecard exists.

Duncan Garden at Manito Park in full summer bloom: formal flower beds, clipped hedges, a gravel path leading to the glass conservatory, ponderosa pines behind. — The part nobody argues about. Duncan Garden at Manito Park, photographed in June 2015. Photo: Roman Eugeniusz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What is getting better, and what is not

The full picture sits on the scorecard: eight measures, each graded each quarter, each linked to its source. Right now one is strong (population keeps growing), four are mixed (unemployment, wages, incomes, retail vacancy), and three are weak (job growth, hiring concentration, and spending in the city’s stores).

Wages are the bright spot with a decade of real climbing behind them. Job growth is the sore spot, with the county losing jobs over the past year. When a grade improves, the scorecard says so at the top of the page, in green, with credit to whoever moved it.

Where these numbers come from

Jobs and pay come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Washington Employment Security Department. Incomes, home values and poverty come from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2024, one-year estimates). Taxes come from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The minimum wage comes from the state. Each figure above is labeled with its geography, because a number that is true of the county is not automatically true of the city.

This page was last updated in September 2026. It is refreshed every quarter with the scorecard. If a number here is wrong, say so, and it gets fixed in public with a note in the change log.