Seattle prospers – but rich-poor gap also grows – Washington State House Democrats

We blogged last week about how income inequality is growing in Washington. Now we have new information about the increasing gap between high earners and lower earners in Seattle.

The richest 20 percent of Seattle residents earned an extra $15,000 in 2013, compared to 2012 – more than the total average income of the bottom 20 percent of workers.

That’s according to a new story by Gene Balk in The Seattle Times, which crunched numbers from the Census Bureau to uncover these trends.

Here’s the money quote, which is literally about the money:

For the 20 percent of city households at the top of the income ladder, things couldn’t be better. Their earnings averaged $248,000 in 2013 — a hefty $15,000 jump from 2012. But for the 20 percent of households at the bottom, incomes averaged just $13,000, unchanged from the previous year.

You read that right: The $15,000 increase for the city’s highest earners exceeded the entire average income for the poorest Seattleites.

Balk’s story points out that good news—Seattle’s prosperity, which includes a big jump in overall incomes and creating the most jobs of any city in the nation—also leads to problems, including skyrocketing prices for housing. That includes renters.

As the Times reports, even tiny studio apartments now rent for $1,600 a month, which is more than the total income of a worker in that bottom 20 percent.

Other recent stories point out that in Seattle, and worldwide, cities are becoming unaffordable for regular workers and the middle class. Instead of professionals and the rich living in leafy suburbs and commuting to work, they’re moving back into the cities they abandoned after World War II. This reverse migration is pushing former city dwellers further and further out into the suburbs, with many of these regular workers relying on mass transit instead of cars, making their commutes even longer.

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