NEWS | Economy
509-868-9181 Depending on how you read the data, Spokane’s economic recovery is lagging behind other cities. tammy marshall photo
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Taking the Temperature A by-the-numbers look at the health of Spokane’s economy BY JOE O’SULLIVAN
O
ne glance at the charts and graphs from the think tank Urban Institute, and it looks like Spokane is a sick puppy. The city’s unemployment rate is going down slower than the rest of the country, its housing prices are still falling, and crime is going up. By comparison, Boise fared better than the rest of the country — and, ahem, Spokane — with faster-falling unemployment numbers, rising home prices and falling crime. But local leaders say Spokane isn’t as bad off as those stats might suggest. And a look into the competing numbers sufficiently muddies the waters. The “vast majority” of jobs being filled here are by younger workers taking the slots of older people who are retiring, according to John Dickson, director of WorkSource Spokane. So in that sense, measuring how many new jobs are created does not capture the whole picture. And those jobs that younger workers are taking from retiring workers tend to be in manufacturing as well as professional jobs like banking and accounting, according to Dickson. In other words, they pay better than average. Still, while the Urban Institute data shows Spokane gaining 3,900 new nonfarm jobs over the past year, another think
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housing market are likely tied together as tank puts that general time frame in a less one reason for Spokane’s slow recovery. rosy context. The Lilac City’s job growth “Construction is really continuing to between May 2011 and May 2012 ranked suffer,” Dickson says. “This is the first 172nd among the 200 biggest cities in recession in a century that [construction] America, according to the Milken Instihasn’t brought us out of recession.” tute. Over all its economic indicators, the Patrick Jones, executive director for the Milken Institute rated Spokane 161st out of 200. Not exactly auspicious, especially Institute for Public Policy and Economic compared to Boise’s 86th place. Analysis at Eastern Washington University, As for housing, it’s another mixed bag. says the Urban Institute’s data shouldn’t be The Urban Institute, using taken as the final word. The instifederal data, says Spokane’s tute is looking at only one year of average house costs about data, rather than multi-year trends, $160,000, down 2.5 percent and doesn’t consider information Send comments to from the same time in 2011. editor@inlander.com. like wage growth, he says. But Rob Higgins, executive “Generally, Spokane is doing vice president of the Spokane better than Albuquerque, Reno, Association of Realtors, says things are getand to some degree Portland,” Jones says. ting better. And his data pegs the average “It’s not doing as well in the recovery comhome price at about the same number — pared to Boise and Seattle.” $160,000 — but as going up since 2011. But Jones points out that Spokane’s “We hit the bottom in 2011, and we’ve “worse than average” fall in the unemploysteadily been coming out of it with positive ment rate may not mean much, because numbers for 2012,” says Higgins. Spokane could only be a fraction off from On top of that, the actual number of being completely average. housing sales in the Spokane area is up 10 The one data set that does worry Jones percent in 2012, according to data by the is crime, which “could discourage compaNational Association of Realtors. nies from relocating” to Spokane. But the combination of housing and Says Jones: “That’s something that employment reveals one trend that isn’t Spokane is an anomaly vis-a-vis the other necessarily a surprise. The job market and regional metros.” n
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