Economic self-sufficiency report underscores Wyoming workers’ struggle to make ends meet

A Campbell County single parent with one preschooler and one school-age child needs to earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic monthly costs living in Wyoming, according to a new report on affordability in the state.

At the minimum wage standard of $7.25 per hour, he or she would have to work a superhuman 159 hours a week to make that happen.

“But there are only 168 hours in a full week,” said Micah Richardson, associate policy director of Wyoming Women’s Foundation. The foundation, which supports women’s economic self-sufficiency and opportunities for girls in Wyoming, released the study, which Richardson says elucidates the challenges facing Wyoming’s workforce.

The 2024 Self-Sufficiency Standard examines the minimum income needed to realistically support a family in Wyoming without public or private assistance. The standard varies based on family configurations as well as location in the state — Teton County unsurprisingly has the highest.

Taken as a whole, the report highlights how difficult it is for many Wyoming families and individuals to meet basic needs without outside support and underlines two costs that are increasingly out of reach: child care and housing.

Not keeping pace

Former Gov. Dave Fruedenthal initiated the first self-sufficiency standard report for Wyoming, which was released in 2005. The state produced a second iteration in 2007, but stopped after that. The Women’s Foundation took it back up in 2016 after determining it was a valuable tool in examining and understanding affordability in the state. Working with the University of Washington, the foundation produced new calculations in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

The “standard” isn’t represented by any one measure — it varies by geography and family makeup. Because of that, the 2024 standard is not something that can be compared easily in “better” or “worse” terms to previous years. The report, however, contains illustrative data.

One example is a comparison of how the median annual earnings of cashiers in Wyoming changed from 2005 to 2024 versus the changes in the self-sufficiency standard over the same period.

“The median income has only gone up from $15,940 to $27,875, in all of those years, but the amount it takes to earn a self-sufficient wage has drastically increased,” Richardson said — from roughly $28,000 to more than $66,000 in Laramie County and $61,000 in Campbell County. The wage trajectory hasn’t kept pace, she said.

The report findings square with what the foundation is hearing from families and individuals struggling to make a living here, she said. Costs are rising quickly, and wages, which have rarely kept pace, are falling even further behind.

Pain points

For families with young children, the combined costs of housing and child care typically make up the most substantial portion of the family’s budget, the report states. For a typical family with two adults, one infant, and one preschooler in Albany County, child care is 30% of the family’s budget while housing is 15%.

That leaves just over 50% of the budget for remaining costs like groceries, gas and clothing.

Even working full time, earning the 2024 federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is not enough to meet the standard anywhere in Wyoming, for any family composition, including single adults, according to the report. If that Campbell County parent with one preschooler and one school-age child earned minimum wage, the report found, he or she would cover only 36% of the family’s basic needs.

Child-care struggles are not a new issue in Wyoming . The state is estimated to have a “potential child care gap” of 27.6%, according to a 2022 Bipartisan Policy Center assessment. That number reflects the number of children who potentially need care but whose families cannot reasonably access it — some 5,393 kids. A child care needs assessment updated in 2023 concluded that “parents continue to face many barriers in accessing child care” — including cost, availability, schedules, staff turnover, safety record and adult-to-child ratios.

Insufficient and unaffordable housing is another persistent issue. Between 2021 and 2030, the state needs to add between 20,700 and 38,600 units, a 2024 needs assessment found.

Lawmakers are studying both issues during the interim, or legislative off-season.

The No. 1 interim priority for the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee is maternal health care and child care issues. The Joint Education Committee’s top priority, meanwhile, is early childhood education, and the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee is examining strategies to increase the state’s housing supply as its third priority.

The Wyoming Women’s Foundation has testified to the Labor committee specifically about child care and intends to remain involved.

“I think there can be some things that are done that cost a little less money, but there are also probably, in our opinion, some investments that need to be made in order to help kind of close the gap, when 45% of costs for people in Wyoming, if they have children, are child care and housing,” Richardson said.

Takeaways, solutions

Some other major takeaways in the self-sufficiency standard include:

• The costs of meeting basic needs in Wyoming between 2005 and 2024 increased by a larger amount than predicted using the Consumer Price Index. For a family with two adults, one preschooler and one school-age child in Sheridan County, the cost of living increased by 118% not including taxes, rather than the 68% predicted if the 2005 standard were adjusted to 2024 using the CPI.
• A single child makes a great deal of difference. In Albany County, the standard goes from $29,866 for one adult to $53,498 when you add a preschooler. In Crook County the number jumps from $29,316 to $50,035. And in Teton County, it shoots from $39,882 to $76,105 with a preschooler.
• Only two of the top 10 most common jobs in Wyoming pay enough for a single adult in Laramie County with a preschooler and school-age child to earn the standard of $63,321.
• The standard is highest in Teton County, where one adult with one preschooler would need to earn $36.03 an hour. For one adult with one preschooler, the standard is lowest in Goshen County, at $21.08 an hour.

In addition, the standard only considers “bare bones” costs, according to the report. It does not contemplate extras such as restaurant meals or entertainment.

There is no silver-bullet solution to making life more affordable, Richardson said, but there are policy tweaks or initiatives the state can consider to relieve its workforce. Medicaid expansion can give more people health care coverage, and getting child care workers on a state health insurance plan would offer an incentive for that line of work that could help fill the worker shortage. Tax credits or child-care subsidies are other supports that could help working families, according to Richardson.

It may cost the state money upfront, she said, “but in the long run, the support that it would give our workforce and our businesses and the ability to keep our young people here who are having children because they can access and afford child care is, in my mind, and I think in the Women’s Foundation’s mind, well worth it.”

The Legislature’s joint Labor and Education committees both meet at the end of August, and are expected to continue discussing child care and early childhood education. Corporations, meanwhile, met Tuesday and Wednesday in Evanston.

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