Here’s how many Whatcom County jobs offer annual salaries of $100,000 or more
Whatcom County remains below the national average when it comes to high-wage jobs.
A report put together by the e-commerce website Volusion found that 3.1% of Whatcom County’s jobs offer annual salaries at $100,000 or higher. That’s an estimated 2,390 people who make a six-figure salary locally.
That is well below the national average of a 6.7% according to the report, which analyzed data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Whatcom County also trails the national average in terms of adding six-figure salaries. Between 2015-2018, the percentage increase of that salary level rose 79.7%; the national average increase for the same period was 84.6%.
One factor for Whatcom’s slower increase is that this area has a relatively small economy, said Hart Hodges, co-director at the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University. He noted that nationally the jobs with the most six-figure salaries are operation managers and software developers, occupations Whatcom doesn’t have many of because of the smaller population.
He also noted that some similarly sized communities with colleges such as Flagstaff, Arizona, and Asheville, North Carolina, also have a low percentage of six-figure salaries.
One other factor could be the low presence of a middle-job market in Whatcom County, said James McCafferty, who is also a director at Western’s economic research center. Mid-level manager jobs provide a certain upward pressure on wages, leading to higher salaries.
“A lack of job mobility is another concern I often share — we do not have a lot of employers to pick from when it comes to higher wages, which means that even occupations that are present do not show the wage pressure you might see somewhere else,” McCafferty wrote in an email.
The Seattle metro area has a 13.1% share of six-figure occupations, ranking fifth-highest in the nation. The San Jose, California metro area ranked the highest, with a 28.2% share.
