Area's middle class is losing ground

More people are flying high or falling into poverty while the middle class is shrinking, says a county report released Wednesday.

Wages, adjusted for inflation, rose 1 percent per year from 2001 through 2006, but that gain "has not been evenly distributed among King County households," according to the 2007 Annual Growth Report, which compiles a variety of data from various agencies.

The notion that fewer people qualify as middle-class is not new, but the numbers present a stark picture.

In 1990, more than half of county households earned between 50 and 149 percent of median income. (Half of people earn more than median, half less.) By 2004, only 45.1 percent of households were within 50 percent of that year's $60,700 median income. But the numbers of rich and poor grew during that period, to 31.6 percent and 23.3 percent respectively.

One reason for the trend may be the long-term reduction of high-paying Boeing jobs and the loss of high-tech jobs during the dot-com bust early in this decade, said county demographer Chandler Felt, coupled with an increase in lower-paying service jobs — "hamburger-flipper jobs that just don't pay enough to feed a family."

The shrinking of King County's middle class reflects a national trend in which more wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands, said Felt, editor of the growth report.

The number of county residents below the poverty line rose from 7.7 percent in 1980 to 10.4 percent in 2004, according to the report, while the national poverty rate held even at roughly 13 percent. Washingtonians in poverty went from 9.8 percent to 13 percent in that period.

A 2006 Census report estimated that 9.5 percent of county residents, or 170,000 people, lived in poverty, apparently reflecting a period of economic recovery.

Workers lost 80,000 jobs during the dot-com bust and recession — and then regained "nearly all" those jobs, the report said.

The average salary in 2006 was $53,500.

While low mortgage-interest rates helped more people become homeowners in recent years, skyrocketing property values have meant that a rising number of owners and renters are paying a larger portion of their incomes to stay in their homes.

In 1990, 18 percent of homeowners spent more than 30 percent of their income on house payments; by 2005, 32 percent of homeowners spent that much. Renters paying more than 30 percent of income on housing went from 39 to 47 percent.

Here are other highlights from the growth report:

• After decades of decline, the average household size has stabilized at 2.39.

• Tukwila has the largest population of minority groups: 46 percent.

• The largest concentration of Asian Americans — 22 percent of the population — lives in Bellevue.

• The number of Latinos in King County more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, reaching 7.2 percent in 2006.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com