On the east side of King County — the state’s most expensive area, in terms of cost of living — that single adult would need to make almost $44,000 a year to get by, while the single parent with a baby would need to make nearly $83,000 to cover basic housing, transportation, food and child care needs.

The data are part of the 2020 update of the , a report that identifies, county-by-county, the amount of income needed to support families of various sizes without additional help from the government, community or other personal resources. Produced by the at the 91±¬ÁĎ School of Social Work for the , the study, released Oct. 15, shows an increase in the cost of living for almost every family size, in every county, since the last report in 2017.

And while counties on the west side of the Cascades generally require higher wages to pay for basic needs, the cost of living in Eastern Washington counties grew significantly, too. The self-sufficiency wage for a single person in Walla Walla County, for example, grew 27% over the past three years.

COVID-19 upended the U.S. economy this year, and researchers collected much of the data for the 2020 Self-Sufficiency Standard before long-term economic effects could be measured. So the substantial burden carried by families, as illustrated in the report, should be considered a baseline against which to measure the impact of the economic disruption and any policies designed to address it, researchers said.

“The Self-Sufficiency Standard documents that Washington’s families face a growing crunch as costs are rising faster than wages,” said report author , who created the Self-Sufficiency Standard in 2001. “Additionally, we found that during the Great Recession, the cost of basic needs remained the same or increased, while families concurrently experienced lost incomes. Right now, despite lost wages due to the pandemic, families are still having to make hard choices trying to pay rent, buy food, and arrange child care.””

Since 2001, the Self-Sufficiency Standard has been compiled for 41 states and the District of Columbia. Researchers with the Center for Women’s Welfare update individual states as funding allows. This year the center  has produced data for 31 states, with reports completed or in the works for Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York and Wyoming.

Researchers use a number of methodologies and sources to develop the Self-Sufficiency Standard. “Self-sufficiency” is defined as a bare-bones lifestyle: no spending on travel or entertainment. Food costs assume all meals are prepared at home, based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Low-Cost Food Plan. Transportation costs are based on transit fares if at least 7% of a county’s workforce commutes by bus; otherwise, a series of costs are calculated for operating, maintaining and insuring a car.

In Washington, the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County provides an accompanying interactive tool, , for families and career counselors. The tool integrates Self-Sufficiency Standard data with basic budgeting, career and vocational planning, along with embedded information about work supports, such as food stamps or subsidized health care, to allow users to determine their own self-sufficiency.

According to the state Office of Financial Management, median household income in Washington . Meanwhile, the Self-Sufficiency Standard estimates that statewide costs have increased by 72% on average, while median earnings, according to the Census Bureau, have increased by just 60% since 2001.

Among the trends highlighted by the 2020 Self-Sufficiency Standard:

• Cost of living varies wildly by geography. A single adult needs to make $17.61 to get by in King County, while in Lincoln County, the hourly self-sufficiency wage is $8.69.
• Family size boosts expenses substantially, no matter the location, especially if children are young enough to require care while a parent works. A single parent in Seattle with an infant and a preschooler needs to make $47.12 an hour to make ends meet, while that same family in Lincoln County needs $23.06.
• For households with children, housing and child care typically claim the largest share of the budget — in Yakima County, for example, a two-parent, two-child family spends half of its income on those expenses.
• The Self-Sufficiency Standard in Seattle, specifically, is higher than many other cities around the country, such as Chicago, Denver, Portland and Phoenix.
• In Seattle, among the 10 most common occupations, only three — operations managers, registered nurses and software developers — have wages above the Self-Sufficiency Standard for a single parent with two young children.

“For decades, the Seattle region has had great economic prosperity and high-wage job growth, but the economic divide has widened as low-wage jobs have expanded and middle-wage jobs have steadily declined,” said Marie Kurose, chief executive officer of the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County. “Many workers can no longer afford the high cost of housing, child care and transportation, and workers of color are hit the hardest. As we rebuild from the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19, we must prioritize jobs and economic supports that meet the higher costs of our region.”

The report accompanying the Self-Sufficiency Standard notes the importance of government support in helping working families, the inadequacy of current federal poverty guidelines in accounting for all needs and expenses, and the need for higher wages, generally. The report is used to evaluate policy, target job training resources, advise clients in worker-training programs, and assist grant-makers with needs analyses and impact assessment.

“The federal poverty guidelines are simply outdated. They were developed half a century ago, based solely on the cost of food.” said Lisa Manzer, the project’s principal investigator. “Basic costs such as housing and health care are rising much faster than food and don’t reflect new costs such as child care. This leads to families, who are above the federal poverty guidelines but below the Self-Sufficiency Standard, stuck with scarce opportunity for governmental support and insufficient income for basic needs.”

One major company, IKEA, uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard to inform its livable wage calculations and helps fund updates to the Standard for every state in which it operates stores.

For more information, contact Annie Kucklick at akuckl@uw.edu or Joe Taylor at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, jtaylor@seakingwdc.org.

Information from the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County was included in this release.

A Seattle family of four must bring in $75,000 annually to pay for basic housing, food, transportation and health and child care – an increase of 62 percent since 2006, based on a new report from the 91±¬ÁĎ.

The city’s escalating cost of living may not be a surprise. But across the state, the amount of money required to make ends meet for two adults, a preschooler and a school-age child has risen as well, according to the . When compared to 2001, the first year the Self-Sufficiency Standard was calculated, costs for that same family of four have increased an average of 59 percent statewide.

The county-by-county report identifies the amount of income needed to support families of various sizes without additional help from the government, community or other personal resources.

Family size and geography are the primary determinants of what is considered a self-sufficient income. In Asotin County, where the self-sufficiency bar is lowest, the study finds that a family of four needs an annual income of $49,000; housing costs roughly $725 a month, less than half what that family might pay for lower-end housing in King County, the most expensive in the state.

Even with differences in household size and location, the same trend emerges: that the cost of meeting basic needs continues to rise faster than wages. According to the report, families of any size, in even the least-expensive counties, cannot get by on the state’s $11 hourly minimum wage. Only single adults, in some counties, can survive on $11 an hour or less.

“It’s discouraging. We’re providing jobs, but we’re not providing income to people,” said , a senior lecturer in the 91±¬ÁĎ School of Social Work and director of the Center for Women’s Welfare, where she has produced the Self-Sufficiency Standard since 2001.

“People can’t budget their way out of this,” she said. “This isn’t about people misusing their money. This is about wages falling behind costs.”

Between 2000 and 2014, the average wage in Washington grew , according to the state Office of Financial Management. During approximately the same timeframe, a family of four needed an average of 46 percent more to get by, the 2014 Self-Sufficiency Standard reported. Today, the state’s (4.5 percent) hovers around the national average, while Seattle’s is below, at 3.4 percent.

The latest report, produced for and funded by the , outlines the methodologies for calculating basic needs; “self-sufficient” in this report assumes a bare-bones standard of living, with no spending on entertainment, travel or even takeout. Food costs, for example, are based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s and assumes all food is prepared at home. If more than 7 percent of workers in a county use public transit – as is the case in Seattle – then transportation costs are calculated based on transit fares; otherwise, a number of sources contribute to the math of driving a car (and make for a higher share of the cost of living). And in all cases, of course, the costs of supporting children add significantly to a family’s budget.

Dot Fallihee, interim chief executive officer of the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, said the report offers valuable information on what families need to make ends meet.  “While so many Seattle-King County industries are booming, the cost of sustaining a family and an individual’s livelihood is growing,” she said. “This invaluable resource supports our conversations within the community on how not just a job, but a career pathway, can support individuals and families in their journey forward towards self-sufficiency.”

Housing and child care claim half – or more — of a family’s budget. Housing prices in Puget Sound’s most populous counties — King, Snohomish and Pierce – in the spring. Rents have risen steadily, too.

The 2017 Self-Sufficiency Standard report also found:

• To make ends meet in East King County (including Bellevue, Redmond, Mercer Island), a family of two adults, a preschooler and an infant needs a nearly six-figure annual income — $94,000, driven mostly by housing, child care and taxes.
• Costs have grown at a much slower pace in most rural counties.
• In 2006, there was a $6,000 difference between King and Yakima counties in the amount of annual income a family of four needed; today, that gap has expanded to nearly $20,000.
• Seattle ranks third, behind San Francisco and Brooklyn, respectively, for the hourly wage required to support a single parent, a preschooler and a school-age child: $33.37.

Of the most common occupations in a given county, few pay above the Self-Sufficiency Standard for families. In Kennewick-Richland, for example, only one of the 10 most common jobs – secretary/administrative assistant – pays a median hourly wage above the standard for a single parent with a preschooler. In the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area, the same is true of three of the most common jobs: software developer, general or operations manager and registered nurse.

Though Seattle has adopted a new $15 hourly minimum wage, the law won’t go into effect for all workers until 2021 – and even then, Pearce said, it’s not enough for a family in Seattle to subsist on without government or other support. What the federal government defines as “poverty,” the report points out, is outdated and too low, its income thresholds more a measure of “deprivation” than poverty.

Boosting wages around the state, and in a variety of service-sector and other popular jobs, is a key solution, the report concludes. “Raising wages can have a positive impact not only for workers, but also for employers by decreasing turnover, increasing work experience and reducing training and recruitment costs.”

Increasing and indexing the minimum wage would provide a wage floor, the report adds, allowing wages to keep pace with inflation.

Over the years, Pearce and her colleagues at the Center for Women’s Welfare have compiled the Self-Sufficiency Standard for 39 of 50 states, as funding allows. Washington’s report has been released every three years; this year a report for North Carolina has been released, while those for Oregon and Michigan are still to come.

In Washington, the Self-Sufficiency Standard provides cost of living data that represents a benchmark of wages required to meet basic household needs for over 700 family types based on family size, composition and location. The Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King  County uses the Self-Sufficiency Standard, and the they designed and made available statewide , in helping customers plan how much money they will need to keep their family afloat, Pearce said.

Fallihee added, “The Self-Sufficiency Standard and the online calculator tool we developed are used across our 41 WorkSource sites to provide career pathway planning, basic budgeting and links to work supports to customers. Career counselors help individuals and their families track their self-sufficiency progress as they plan for their future long-term career goals.”

Lisa Manzer, the report’s lead researcher, said the data reveals how difficult it is for working families in low-paying jobs to meet that standard.

“It shows the importance of benefits to close the gap between what the wages are and what the needs are,” said Manzer, the senior research coordinator for the Center for Women’s Welfare. “Those benefits are under attack in every state — unfortunately, that hasn’t gone away.”

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For more information, contact Pearce at pearce@uw.edu or Manzer at lmanzer@uw.edu; or Hannah Mello at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, 206-448-0474, ext. 3014,  or hmello@seakingwdc.org.