Another look at Clark County’s wage gap
The wage gap is widening in Clark County, according to a story by reporter Aaron Corvin that we published yesterday. In the story, Corvin reports that “the median hourly wage for jobs in Clark County ($20.05 in 2013, adjusted for inflation) has remained flat even as the economy has recovered lost jobs and added more after the end of the Great Recession.”
Those numbers come from a recent analysis by Scott Bailey, regional labor economist for the state Employment Security Department, who has been talking about the flattening of wages for some time. In fact, Bailey mentioned this topic earlier this year at the annual Economic Forecast breakfast where he described how the top earners have “Hoovered up” most of the economic gains for some time (see video to right).
With all this in mind, we’ve created this chart below and an interactive map of Washington (image below) so you can see how median wages in each county have fluctuated some but not much since 1990.
John Hill
John is the web and photo editor at The Columbian, where he has worked since 1995 in various roles. A journalist for the past 25 years, he's a fan of good storytelling, data, graphics and still likes to read an actual newspaper. Twitter: @hilljohng