Benton Franklin Trends

08/04/2026

The BLS released the results of the 2025 Time Use Survey giving us important insights into how Americans spend their day. Interestingly at 2 pm, what many consider in the midst of a typical work-day, less than one-third of American adults are "working." At 8 pm, more than half of us are engaging in leisure. And notice the relatively smaller portion of time devoted to family-care.

https://www.bls.gov/tus/

08/04/2026

On Thursday, the BEA released June numbers for disposable personal income (DPI) and personal consumption expenditures. Across the US, people continue to spend more than they are bringing in, resulting in the decline in savings (black line). In June, DPI increased 0.2 percent but consumption spending increased 0.3 percent.

https://www.bea.gov/news/2026/personal-income-and-outlays-june-2026

07/30/2026

Our awesome student interns are vital to our success and we appreciate them today and every day. They work incredibly hard at managing and updating data, making / editing cool graphs, and writing analyses.

07/28/2026

Combined, the share of the Tri Cities population that are in the youngest (0-17) and oldest (65+) age groups has not changed over the past 25 years, holding steady around 40%. However, the community is clearly getting older. As you can see in the graph, the 65+ age group increased its share by 5 percentage points and at the same time, the 17 and under group decreased its share by nearly the exact same amount.

To see all the data, especially how the combined counties benchmark against the state average, head over to Benton Franklin Trends: https://bentonfranklintrends.org/

07/23/2026

According to QCEW data recently released for 2025, average annual wages in the top four sectors (by employment) of the Tri Cities economy continue to increase at a similar pace to the state average. Head over to Benton Franklin Trends to check out the trends disaggregated by city and county.

https://bentonfranklintrends.org/

07/17/2026

Over the summer, our student interns, such as Moon, are able to put in more hours at the office and we are happy to have them! Head on over to Benton Franklin Trends to see which demographic, economic, health, education, housing or transportation indicators they might have recently updated.

https://bentonfranklintrends.org/

07/15/2026

Have you seen our latest blog where we describe recent trends that have been updated and the impacts on the local community?

https://bentonfranklintrends.org/newsletter/blog/

While you are there, make sure to sign up to receive our blog as soon as we publish it. We just need a first name and e-mail address.

https://bentonfranklintrends.org/newsletter/subscribe/

Benton-Franklin Trends Blog In this blog, we showcase a few of the indicators that have been recently updated.We publish the blog semi-annually. Don’t miss an update – subscribe today! Trends Update List in PEOPLE:The Tri Cities are slowly getting older.The estimate of a community’s median age...

07/13/2026

Washington OFM just released their 2026 population estimates and components of population change showing that the Benton & Franklin combined counties grew at a rate of 1.9% -- more than twice as fast as the state average!

While the area saw a natural increase of 1,762 (births over deaths), the biggest cause of population growth was the residual net migration of 4,400 MORE people who moved into the counties than left the counties over the past year.

https://bentonfranklintrends.org/

03/25/2024

DAILY DOSE OF DATA: Washington leads the nation in arts & cultural production as a share of GDP -- accounting for nearly 9.5% of Washington's GDP (almost $1 out of every $10 of total output). According to the latest figures from the BEA, Washington's arts & culture sector of the economy is nearly twice as big as the national average (4.8%). The biggest gains recently have been in performing arts and fine arts education.

Source:https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-03/acpsa0324.pdf

03/20/2024

DAILY DOSE OF DATA: Washington is a great state for women small business owners, considering 42% of its small businesses are owned by women. Of those businesses, 34% make a revenue of $1 million or more. Washington’s employment rate among women (59%) is also high compared to other states.

Source: https://www.lendio.com/blog/best-states-for-women-small-business-owners/