In 'job gap,' there's just no getting ahead
People can make plenty more than poverty level, but still not enjoy a 'living wage'

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Susan Gilmore and David Heath
Seattle Times staff reporters

Troy Grugett, a musician with a college degree, is raising three kids on his annual salary of about $35,000.

To manage, he rents a tidy, wood-frame home in Greenwood, drives a 1974 Oldsmobile and foregoes luxuries such as cable TV or a cell phone.

"My savings are depleted," he said. "I make enough to pay the rent, bills -- phone and electric. My big treat to myself is lunch out occasionally." Grugett exemplifies what University of Washington researchers Paul Sommers and Paul Stern call the "job gap" -- the chasm between what a typical worker earns and a no-frills budget they call the "living wage."

The Seattle Times, drawing on some of the methods of a study done last year by UW's Northwest Policy Center, estimated a single parent with two young children needed to earn $42,000 in 1998 to pay basic rent, food, child care and transportation, with a small cushion left over for savings or emergencies. Fifty-four percent of King County's full-time workers didn't earn that much, according to a Times analysis of 1998 wage data from the state Bureau of Employment Security.

Moreover, despite robust economic growth in King County in the 1990s, the percentage of people earning the hypothetical "living wage" remained virtually unchanged from 1990 to 1998, the Times analysis found. That means higher living costs just about ate up wage increases among lower- to middle-income workers.

On the other hand, most King County families have two breadwinners, and for them the no-frills budget is very achievable: 86 percent of workers made at least $23,000, which, combined with a second income, was enough to meet the $46,000 budget for a family of four.

Economists have developed the "living wage" as an alternative to the federal poverty threshold, which many contend is unrealistically low because it does not adequately account for things like child care or medical care. The poverty threshold for a single parent and two children was $13,423 last year.

The threshold for a "living wage" may sound high until you start calculating what it takes for bare-bones survival in King County.

The average apartment costs $792 a month in King County, and that doesn't include most utilities. -- In sought-after Seattle and Eastside neighborhoods, of course, the figure could be several hundred dollars higher.

Grugett pays $1,200 a month for a five-bedroom house in north Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood, giving him extra space for a music studio and playroom -- what he calls his "Lego room." Grugett is able to afford the rent in part because his ex-wife arranges after-school care for their children, 8-year-old twin girls and a 12-year-old son. Otherwise, day-care costs would drive him into debt.

Grugett's monthly costs of paying for a car, insurance and gasoline closely match the living-wage budget of $372 a month. But at age 34, he still owes $173 a month in college loans, something that's not accounted for in the living-wage budget.

What's left for savings is $214 a month, or 6 percent. Grugett, who recently lost his job repairing musical instruments and now hopes to make a living teaching saxophone, has no stocks. His only investments are in musical instruments.

He doesn't know how he'll ever get ahead enough to buy a house.

"For the last 10 or 12 years I've always been four years behind the market, and that gap is growing," he said. "If the market was like it was four years ago I could get into a house."

Grugett, a graduate of Oregon State University, grew up in an Oregon timber family. When his father left, his mother went back to work and raised her three children on one salary.

"We laugh about it," he said. "I'm living the life I was brought up to live."

Grugett knows he could switch careers and make more money, but, he said, many jobs would require him to go back to school and he can't afford it.

"I make enough money to survive and not have to sacrifice time with my kids," said Grugett. "I'm opposed to the great American ideal where the dad is working and the mom drives the Suburban to soccer games. My father was never around. I decided as a kid that was not the way I wanted to do things when I was an adult."

	King County `living wage' budgets
	Job growth at the extremes
	Jobs grew faster than people
	What people make

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