In 2023, the median household income in Washington amounted to 93,440 U.S. dollars. This is an increase from the previous year, when the median household income in the state amounted to 89,430 U.S. dollars. The median household income for the United States may be accessed here.

Graph and download economic data for Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees: Total Private in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV (MSA) (SMU11479000500000003) from Jan 2007 to Dec 2024 about DC, Washington, MD, WV, earnings, VA, hours, private, employment, and USA.

In 2022, San Francisco had the highest median household income of cities ranking within the top 25 in terms of population, with a median household income in of 136,692 U.S. dollars. In that year, San Jose in California was ranked second, and Seattle, Washington third.

Following a fall after the great recession, median household income in the United States has been increasing in recent years. As of 2022, median household income by state was highest in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Utah, and Massachusetts. It was lowest in Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Families with an annual income of 25,000 and 49,999 U.S. dollars made up the largest income bracket in America, with about 25.26 million households.

Data on median household income can be compared to statistics on personal income in the U.S. released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income rose to around 21.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022, the highest value recorded. Personal income is a measure of the total income received by persons from all sources, while median household income is “the amount with divides the income distribution into two equal groups,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Half of the population in question lives above median income and half lives below. Though total personal income has increased in recent years, this wealth is not distributed throughout the population. In practical terms, income of most households has decreased. One additional statistic illustrates this disparity: for the lowest quintile of workers, mean household income has remained more or less steady for the past decade at about 13 to 16 thousand constant U.S. dollars annually. Meanwhile, income for the top five percent of workers has actually risen from about 285,000 U.S. dollars in 1990 to about 499,900 U.S. dollars in 2020.

This graph shows average wages around the world in 2012 as calculated by purchasing power parity. In 2012 the highest average wage was earned in Luxembourg at 4,089 purchasing power parity dollars. Wages and salaries Wages and salaries in the United States have increased during the last decades. The median weekly earnings of a full-time wage and salary worker were about 241 U.S. dollars in 1979 and shifted up to 768 U.S. dollars in 2012.

The median earnings of U.S. full-time wage and salary workers vary across their educational attainment. The highest paid workers are those who hold a bachelor’s degree, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The U.S. federal government specified minimum wage laws for workers in the United States, which say that workers must be paid no less than the current federal minimum wage. The minimum wage was set at 7.25 U.S. dollars per hour by federal law. The actual minimum wage varies from state to state, as some states have additional minimum wage laws.

For instance, the minimum wage in Washington was around 9.04 U.S. dollars per hour, while the worst minimum wage can be found in Georgia, where workers earn at least 5.15 U.S. dollars per hour. No minimum wages can be found in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi, as of January 1, 2012.

The number of workers paid hourly rates with earnings at or below the minimum wage in the U.S. was at its highest in the industry type of leisure and hospitality in 2013.

Recent statistics show that the share of female workers paid hourly rates at or below prevailing federal minimum wage in the United States decreased since 1979. In that year, 20.2 percent of the female wage and salary workers were paid below the federal minimum wage, while only 2.9 percent of the female workers were paid below the federal minimum wage in 2006.

Graph and download economic data for Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees: Total Private in Washington (SMU53000000500000003) from Jan 2007 to Dec 2024 about WA, earnings, hours, private, employment, and USA.

Table from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year series for King County and City of Seattle median values for a variety of topics including age, gross rent, monthly owner costs, family and nonfamily incomes, earnings. Includes the margin of error for the values.Table created for and used in the Neighborhood Profiles application.Vintages: 2010, 2015, 2020, 2023ACS Table(s): B01002, B25064, B25088, B19013, B19113, B19202, B20017Data downloaded from: Census Bureau's Explore Census Data The United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS):About the SurveyGeography & ACSTechnical DocumentationNews & UpdatesThis ready-to-use layer can be used within ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, its configurable apps, dashboards, Story Maps, custom apps, and mobile apps. Data can also be exported for offline workflows. Please cite the Census and ACS when using this data.Data Note from the Census:Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate arising from sampling variability is represented through the use of a margin of error. The value shown here is the 90 percent margin of error. The margin of error can be interpreted as providing a 90 percent probability that the interval defined by the estimate minus the margin of error and the estimate plus the margin of error (the lower and upper confidence bounds) contains the true value. In addition to sampling variability, the ACS estimates are subject to nonsampling error (for a discussion of nonsampling variability, see Accuracy of the Data). The effect of nonsampling error is not represented in these tables.Data Processing Notes:Boundaries come from the US Census TIGER geodatabases, specifically, the National Sub-State Geography Database (named tlgdb_(year)_a_us_substategeo.gdb). Boundaries are updated at the same time as the data updates (annually), and the boundary vintage appropriately matches the data vintage as specified by the Census. These are Census boundaries with water and/or coastlines erased for cartographic and mapping purposes. For census tracts, the water cutouts are derived from a subset of the 2020 Areal Hydrography boundaries offered by TIGER. Water bodies and rivers which are 50 million square meters or larger (mid to large sized water bodies) are erased from the tract level boundaries, as well as additional important features. For state and county boundaries, the water and coastlines are derived from the coastlines of the 2020 500k TIGER Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles. These are erased to more accurately portray the coastlines and Great Lakes. The original AWATER and ALAND fields are still available as attributes within the data table (units are square meters). The States layer contains 52 records - all US states, Washington D.C., and Puerto RicoCensus tracts with no population that occur in areas of water, such as oceans, are removed from this data service (Census Tracts beginning with 99).Percentages and derived counts, and associated margins of error, are calculated values (that can be identified by the "_calc_" stub in the field name), and abide by the specifications defined by the American Community Survey.Field alias names were created based on the Table Shells file available from the American Community Survey Summary File Documentation page.Negative values (e.g., -4444...) have been set to null, with the exception of -5555... which has been set to zero. These negative values exist in the raw API data to indicate the following situations:The margin of error column indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute a standard error and thus the margin of error. A statistical test is not appropriate.Either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute an estimate, or a ratio of medians cannot be calculated because one or both of the median estimates falls in the lowest interval or upper interval of an open-ended distribution.The median falls in the lowest interval of an open-ended distribution, or in the upper interval of an open-ended distribution. A statistical test is not appropriate.The estimate is controlled. A statistical test for sampling variability is not appropriate.The data for this geographic area cannot be displayed because the number of sample cases is too small.

In 2023, the per capita disposable personal income in Washington stood at 71,225 U.S. dollars. This is a slight increase from the previous year, when the per capita disposable personal income in the state stood at 64,899 U.S. dollars.

Graph and download economic data for Average Weekly Earnings of All Employees: Goods Producing in Washington (SMU53000000600000011) from Jan 2007 to Jan 2025 about WA, earnings, production, goods, employment, and USA.

In 2023, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro area in California was ranked first with median household income of 153,202 U.S. dollars. The Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro area had a median household income of 121,469 U.S. dollars.

In 2021, the per capita income in San Francisco city was at 80,383 U.S. dollars. San Francisco was followed in this regard by Seattle and Washington, D.C. The most populated cities in the U.S. are ranked by per capita income in this statistic. While New York, New York had the highest population, San Francisco had the highest per capita income in 2021. The median household income in San Francisco in 2020 was 119,136 dollars, the highest among the most populated cities in the United States.

Graph and download economic data for Average Weekly Earnings of All Employees: Professional and Business Services in Washington (SMU53000006000000011) from Jan 2007 to Dec 2024 about professional, WA, earnings, business, services, employment, and USA.

Table from the American Community Survey (ACS) B24021 occupation by median earnings. These are multiple, nonoverlapping vintages of the 5-year ACS estimates of population and housing attributes starting in 2010 shown by the corresponding census tract vintage. Also includes the most recent release annually.King County, Washington census tracts with nonoverlapping vintages of the 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates starting in 2010. Vintage identified in the "ACS Vintage" field.The census tract boundaries match the vintage of the ACS data (currently 2010 and 2020) so please note the geographic changes between the decades. Tracts have been coded as being within the City of Seattle as well as assigned to neighborhood groups called "Community Reporting Areas". These areas were created after the 2000 census to provide geographically consistent neighborhoods through time for reporting U.S. Census Bureau data. This is not an attempt to identify neighborhood boundaries as defined by neighborhoods themselves.Vintages: 2010, 2015, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023ACS Table(s): B24021Data downloaded from: Census Bureau's Explore Census Data The United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS):About the SurveyGeography & ACSTechnical DocumentationNews & UpdatesThis ready-to-use layer can be used within ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, its configurable apps, dashboards, Story Maps, custom apps, and mobile apps. Data can also be exported for offline workflows. Please cite the Census and ACS when using this data.Data Note from the Census:Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate arising from sampling variability is represented through the use of a margin of error. The value shown here is the 90 percent margin of error. The margin of error can be interpreted as providing a 90 percent probability that the interval defined by the estimate minus the margin of error and the estimate plus the margin of error (the lower and upper confidence bounds) contains the true value. In addition to sampling variability, the ACS estimates are subject to nonsampling error (for a discussion of nonsampling variability, see Accuracy of the Data). The effect of nonsampling error is not represented in these tables.Data Processing Notes:Boundaries come from the US Census TIGER geodatabases, specifically, the National Sub-State Geography Database (named tlgdb_(year)_a_us_substategeo.gdb). Boundaries are updated at the same time as the data updates (annually), and the boundary vintage appropriately matches the data vintage as specified by the Census. These are Census boundaries with water and/or coastlines erased for cartographic and mapping purposes. For census tracts, the water cutouts are derived from a subset of the 2020 Areal Hydrography boundaries offered by TIGER. Water bodies and rivers which are 50 million square meters or larger (mid to large sized water bodies) are erased from the tract level boundaries, as well as additional important features. For state and county boundaries, the water and coastlines are derived from the coastlines of the 2020 500k TIGER Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles. These are erased to more accurately portray the coastlines and Great Lakes. The original AWATER and ALAND fields are still available as attributes within the data table (units are square meters). The States layer contains 52 records - all US states, Washington D.C., and Puerto RicoCensus tracts with no population that occur in areas of water, such as oceans, are removed from this data service (Census Tracts beginning with 99).Percentages and derived counts, and associated margins of error, are calculated values (that can be identified by the "_calc_" stub in the field name), and abide by the specifications defined by the American Community Survey.Field alias names were created based on the Table Shells file available from the American Community Survey Summary File Documentation page.Negative values (e.g., -4444...) have been set to null, with the exception of -5555... which has been set to zero. These negative values exist in the raw API data to indicate the following situations:The margin of error column indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute a standard error and thus the margin of error. A statistical test is not appropriate.Either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute an estimate, or a ratio of medians cannot be calculated because one or both of the median estimates falls in the lowest interval or upper interval of an open-ended distribution.The median falls in the lowest interval of an open-ended distribution, or in the upper interval of an open-ended distribution. A statistical test is not appropriate.The estimate is controlled. A statistical test for sampling variability is not appropriate.The data for this geographic area cannot be displayed because the number of sample cases is too small.

In December 2024, inflation amounted to 2.9 percent, while wages grew by 4.2 percent. The inflation rate has not exceeded the rate of wage growth since January 2023. Inflation in 2022 The high rates of inflation in 2022 meant that the real terms value of American wages took a hit. Many Americans report feelings of concern over the economy and a worsening of their financial situation. The inflation situation in the United States is one that was experienced globally in 2022, mainly due to COVID-19 related supply chain constraints and disruption due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The monthly inflation rate for the U.S. reached a 40-year high in June 2022 at 9.1 percent, and annual inflation for 2022 reached eight percent. Without appropriate wage increases, Americans will continue to see a decline in their purchasing power. Wages in the U.S. Despite the level of wage growth reaching 6.7 percent in the summer of 2022, it has not been enough to curb the impact of even higher inflation rates. The federally mandated minimum wage in the United States has not increased since 2009, meaning that individuals working minimum wage jobs have taken a real terms pay cut for the last twelve years. There are discrepancies between states - the minimum wage in California can be as high as 15.50 U.S. dollars per hour, while a business in Oklahoma may be as low as two U.S. dollars per hour. However, even the higher wage rates in states like California and Washington may be lacking - one analysis found that if minimum wage had kept up with productivity, the minimum hourly wage in the U.S. should have been 22.88 dollars per hour in 2021. Additionally, the impact of decreased purchasing power due to inflation will impact different parts of society in different ways with stark contrast in average wages due to both gender and race.

The federally mandated minimum wage in the United States is 7.25 U.S. dollars per hour, although the minimum wage varies from state to state. As of January 1, 2024, the District of Columbia had the highest minimum wage in the U.S., at 17 U.S. dollars per hour. This was followed by Washington, which had 16.28 U.S. dollars per hour as the state minimum wage.

Minimum wage workers

Minimum wage jobs are traditionally seen as “starter jobs” in the U.S., or first jobs for teenagers and young adults, and the number of people working minimum wage jobs has decreased from almost four million in 1979 to about 247,000 in 2020. However, the number of workers earning less than minimum wage in 2020 was significantly higher, at about 865,000.

Minimum wage jobs

Minimum wage jobs are primarily found in food preparation and serving occupations, as well as sales jobs (primarily in retail). Because the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, nor has it been increased since 2009, it is becoming harder and harder live off of a minimum wage wage job, and for those workers to afford essential things like rent.

Graph and download economic data for Average Weekly Earnings of All Employees: Total Private in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV (MSA) (SMU11479000500000011) from Jan 2007 to Jan 2025 about DC, Washington, MD, WV, earnings, VA, private, employment, and USA.

Japan IME: TO: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data was reported at 711.000 JPY in May 2018. This records a decrease from the previous number of 794.000 JPY for Apr 2018. Japan IME: TO: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data is updated monthly, averaging 594.000 JPY from Jan 2005 (Median) to May 2018, with 161 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,195.000 JPY in Apr 2009 and a record low of 183.000 JPY in Feb 2014. Japan IME: TO: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistical Bureau. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Japan – Table JP.H044: Income and Expenditure Survey: Include Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries: By District: Tohoku.

Japan IME: Tokai: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data was reported at 659.000 JPY in May 2018. This records a decrease from the previous number of 800.000 JPY for Apr 2018. Japan IME: Tokai: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data is updated monthly, averaging 530.000 JPY from Jan 2005 (Median) to May 2018, with 161 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,305.000 JPY in May 2007 and a record low of 213.000 JPY in Feb 2017. Japan IME: Tokai: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistical Bureau. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Japan – Table JP.H047: Income and Expenditure Survey: Include Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries: By District: Tokai.

Japan IME: SCT: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data was reported at 664.000 JPY in May 2018. This records a decrease from the previous number of 693.000 JPY for Apr 2018. Japan IME: SCT: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data is updated monthly, averaging 481.000 JPY from Jan 2008 (Median) to May 2018, with 125 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,020.000 JPY in May 2011 and a record low of 200.000 JPY in Feb 2015. Japan IME: SCT: LE: CF: CRS: Wash data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistical Bureau. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Japan – Table JP.H042: Income and Expenditure Survey: Include Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries: By District: Small Cities B and Town.

In 2023, the GDP of the Seatle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area amounted to 487.77 billion U.S. dollars, an increase from the previous year. The GDP of the United States since 1990 can be accessed here. Seattle metro area The Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington includes the city of Seattle, King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County within the Puget Sound region. About 4.03 million people were living in the Seattle metro area, which is more than half of Washington's total population in 2021 (about 7.79 million people). This makes the Seattle metro area the 15th largest metropolitan area in the United States, by population. However, Seattle is in fourth place among the 20 largest metro areas in terms of household income, which stood at 94,027 U.S. dollars in 2019. This is by far more than the average household income in the United States. Household income in Washington is on a similar high level. In 2021, the federal state of Washington was ranked 11th in terms of household income among the states of the U.S. The city of Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It has about 733,820 residents and is among the 25 largest cities in the United States. Seattle has always been an important coastal seaport city and a gateway to Alaska. The importance of the city and metro area is also due to fact that some of the biggest companies worldwide started in Seattle during the 1980s. Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are still based in the Seattle area in the state of Washington.

Graph and download economic data for Average Hourly Earnings of Production Employees: Manufacturing in Washington (SMU53000003000000008) from Jan 2001 to Jan 2025 about WA, hours, production, manufacturing, employment, and USA.