Spokane County’s median household income in 2024 was higher than the national median income for the first time in decades—and maybe ever.
The median household in Spokane County made more than $86,000 last year. The national median was less than $82,000.
That’s according to research by Dr. Patrick Jones and his team of analysts at Eastern Washington University.
It’s a $16,000 jump in Spokane from 2023, a statistically significant one year difference that Jones says “isn’t spurious.”
But he says he’s puzzled by what drove such a big change.
Medians aren’t skewed by high or low extremes, so Jones says this isn’t just a reaction to, say, a few very high earners moving into the county.
Plus, fewer people were working from home for employers in other areas, so that doesn’t explain it.
Rather, if the whole curve of household earnings has shifted, Jones wonders if a jump in federal transfer payments like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare played a role.
"Due to the federal shutdown, county-level data for 2024 showing a breakdown of personal income by type have been delayed, so we really don't know about Spokane at the moment," Jones wrote in an email. "If the state, however, serves as an example, 2024 brought a big jump in transfer payments with it."
He also points out that worker earnings increased by more than 5% in 2024, and about 1,500 more people were employed. That could mean more people per household were working that year—plus earning more money while they were at it.
