SPOKANE, Wash. — The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that workers in the Spokane and Spokane Valley Metropolitan Statistical Area made an average hourly wage of $30.93 as of May 2023.
This is compared to the nationwide average of $31.48 an hour.
BLS Regional Commissioner Chris Rosenlund says that higher-paying groups include management ($65.81), healthcare practitioners ($55.63) and legal ($47.78).
Lower paying occupations include food preparation and service ($19.55) and maintenance ($20.02).
Occupational groups with the highest employment in local areas were reported to include office and administration (12.3%), sales (9.3%) and transportation (8.9%).
Occupational groups with lower local employment included legal (0.7%), social science (0.8%) and entertainment, sports and media (1.3%).
These statistics are from the semiannual Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, a cooperative effort between BLS and the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs). BLS funds the survey and provides the procedures while SWAs collect data. For this survey, the Washington Employment Security Department collected Spokane data.
One occupational group, office and administration, was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available.
Spokane had 31,380 jobs in office and administration, accounting for 12.3 percent of local area employment, compared to 12.2 percent nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $23.81, compared to the national wage of $23.05.
Some of the detailed occupations within the office and administrative support group included general office clerks (4,440), customer service representatives (3,200), and secretaries and administrative assistants (2,950). Among the higher-paying jobs in this group were first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers and public safety telecommunicators, with mean hourly wages of $34.33 and $31.65, respectively.
At the lower end of the wage scale were hotel desk clerks ($17.19) and mail clerks other than U.S. Postal Service workers ($18.40).
The full report can be accessed through the BLS website.
