I’ve been conducting some research on the pay differential areas in Washington State. Several recent projects required the use of data factoring from the Seattle/Puget Sound area into more rural areas of the State. Here’s a summary of my findings. This is based on several sources of data, including the Washington State/BLS data, ERI Geographic Assessor data and actual client data comparisons.
I had been under the assumption that the geographic pay differentials were shrinking between various areas of the State and the urban Seattle market. In fact, this has happened in some cases, such as Everett versus Seattle. In other cases the differential remains over 10%, such as Omak.
