A new study corroborates what many now know: that decent paying jobs in the northwest are scarce.
The 2008 Job Gap study, released by the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, indicates that parents with dependent children fare worst in the race for a living. In Washington, 23 percent of all job openings pay at least $26.56 per hour, the amount the authors say is livable for a single parent of two children; for the same-sized family in Oregon, Montana, and Idaho, those jobs are scarcer.
Single workers in the Evergreen State might be consoled by one fact, or at least dissuaded from moving: living wage job openings here are at 70 percent, the highest percentage in the four-state region.