Return to "In 'job gap,' there's just no getting ahead"

Despite a booming economy, a Times analysis shows many people are in jobs that do not pay a "living wage," a threshold based on the no-frills budgets below. More than one-half of workers, for example, did not meet the "living wage" for a single parent with two children (Household 3). The figures represent Seattle-area averages from 1998 government statistics. Most figures are rounded to the nearest dollar.

This analysis is by Justin Mayo and David Heath of the Times staff, drawing from government statistics and wage data from the Department of Employment Security. The "Living Wage" methodology is similar to that used by the University of Washington's Northwest Policy Center in its 1999 publication, "The Northwest Job Gap Study: Searching for Work that pays."

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