Welcome to Spokane County!
Spokane County and environs form the 97th largest MSA by population, but combines the best of both a large and small city environment. A large, rushing river runs through the County, with lakes and mountains within a half an hour drive. The community is home for four universities, a diversifying economy, significant sports and cultural events.
Recent Updates:
In PEOPLE:
The county population showed a robust increase in 2024.
Spokane County gained an estimated 6,600 new souls between April 1 of this and last year. The 2025 estimate is 566,000. This represented a 1.2% year-over-year growth rate, second-highest among all Washington counties.
The simple average rate over the past decade is 1.3%, equal to the state growth rates. Within the county, rates vary greatly by jurisdiction. The City of Spokane is quite low while the cities of Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake are far above the county average.
Net migration explained about all of the gain.
Of the total recent population gain of 6,600, nearly all of it can be attributed to net in-migration. The state’s Office of Financial Management’s demographers arrive at a sum of slightly over 6,000. In other words, the contribution of the “natural increase” (births – death) was negligible.
While the largest gain of the past three years, last year’s in-migration was far below the flows in the years immediately preceding the pandemic.
In ECONOMIC VITALITY:
Quarterly residential building permitted units are up sharply this year.
Residential building permits are the harbinger of the near-term future of residential construction. This is important, as residential construction is one of the drivers of a local economy. The Trends tracks permitted units annually and quarterly, thanks to the Census.
For the quarterly recently completed (Q2), the number for the entire county stood at 1,281 units. This is the highest second quarter number since 2015. Since the beginning of 2022, the county rate, expressed by the number of residents, has been higher than the state’s average rate.
SNAP recipients rose slightly in 2023 but are below the peaks of the mid-teens.
The Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) serves a vital role in our country’s safety net. That is certainly true for Spokane County, as the most recent estimate of the number of residents living at or below the federal poverty threshold was about 67,000. The amount awarded by SNAP is typically modest, with the national average at $187 per month.
In 2023, the most recent year for data, about 111,000 county residents participated in the SNAP program. While higher than the prior year, these results place it below the number during the first pandemic year (2020) and certainly the peak year of 2013. Note that the share of county residents enrolled in the program, most recently at 20%, is far higher than the state and nation’s shares.
In EDUCATION:
Kindergarten readiness continues to improve.
Since 2012, Washington public school kindergartens have been administering an assessment known as WaKids. It inquires into six domains of young children’s preparation for school every fall: cognitive, verbal, literacy, math, physical and socio emotional. Ideally, a child registers “kindergarten-ready” in all six domains. But the indicator also tracks the share of children who register readiness in 0-1, 2-3 and 4-5 domains.
For school year 2024-25, one half of all entering kindergarteners in the county’s 13 school districts registered “ready” in all domains. This represents the best readiness score on record. But the county’s children still trail those of the entire state, as the average readiness statewide in all six domains reached 54% last fall.
To simplify the graph, click on those elements of the legend that you would like to hide.
In EDUCATION cont:
The share of graduating seniors who complete the FAFSA is now less than half.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is, for nearly all college-going families, essential to complete. The share of seniors who fill out the application gives a good idea of the college-going rate and may point to the number of seniors and their families who gave up filling out the sometimes challenging form.
For the class of ’24, the share of the county high school graduates who completed the FAFSA was 49%. While not the lowest recent year on record (that would be the class of 2022), the share represents a decline from the pre-pandemic period. Then (2018 and 2019), the share stood at 61%. This decline represents another manifestation of the impact of covid-19 on the education system.
In ENVIRONMENT:
Acres burned in wildfires in eastern WA and OR soared last summer.
An all-too companion to the beautiful summers of the Inland Pacific Northwest has become soot-filled skies, or worse, flames too close for comfort. Wildfires appear to follow the rise in temperatures throughout our region. This indicator looks at acres burned in 6 regions that define the areas east of the Cascades in Washington and Oregon. Smoke from these regions can affect air quality and consequently health in Spokane County.
As the graph clearly displays, 2024 was for the record books, at last recent records. 1.4 million acres burned. In only one recent year, 2014, did the number of acres burned exceed this total, and then not by too much. Yet, 2023 was the reverse, with 176,000 acres burned. So far, 2025 looks like a repeat of 2023. Thankfully.
The number of high heat days in the county has steadily increased over two decades.
Averages are excellent in conveying a lot of information in one number. But variation also matters. This indicator takes one general part of the variation seen in average temperatures by compiling the number of very hot days per year. Very hot, as defined here, are those days in the county where the temperature exceeds 90 degrees F.
In 2023, the most recent year for these data, the number of high heat days totaled 24. While lower than the peak, 38 days in 2021, these results were the third highest since the turn of the century. And the trend since 2000 is certainly upward.
In HEALTH:
The projected years of life a newborn is one of the fundamental measures of public health. Its calculations encapsulate current, age-specific death rates, assuming that they will accompany the newborn through its life. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calculates these predictions for all counties in the U.S., and provides further, sub-county detail.
For 2023, the most recent year with available data, life expectancy in Spokane County for a newborn was 78.3 years. While above the prior two years, the result was below the pre-pandemic (2019) peak of 78.9 years. For the past 15 years, life expectancy here has been approximately the same as in the U.S. However, Spokane County’s life expectancy has been below the state average by 1.5 – 2.0 years.
Life expectancy at birth by zip code.
As in many aspects of American life, life expectancy values are not evenly distributed. They vary significantly by race and ethnicity. They vary by income levels. And they also vary by geography, such as neighborhoods. This indicator examines the five zip codes with the highest life expectancy in Spokane County and compares their average to the average of the five zip codes with the five lowest life expectancy values.
In 2023, the county zip codes with the highest life expectancy yielded an average of 82.8 years. In the same year those zip codes with the lowest life expectancy yielded an average of 73 years. Over the years covered by this indicator, the gap between the two sets of zip codes has averaged 9.4 years. Both sets of zip codes show lower values in the present than in 2010.
list updated 7.04.2025
The complete list of Spokane Trends can be found here.
About The Institute
The Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis is a research institute for applied regional research that provides easily accessible community indicator data. The Institute publishes nine community trend sites for thirteen Washington counties, all of which cover a variety of factors like economic vitality, health, housing, and more. The Institute’s work is aimed to promote data-based decision making and provide readily available and extensive data for communities across Washington state.
