The Walla Walla Trends project seeks to improve local, public decision making by providing relevant data in an easily navigable website. The data provided on this website is offered as neutral information.
This page will be updated and email alerts sent on a quarterly basis. Don't miss an update - subscribe today!
Recent Updates
In PEOPLE:
Total population in the county again grew slowly this year.
As of April 1st of this year, total population in the county was estimated at 63,800. This includes about 2,100 inmates at the Penitentiary. The year-over-year increase was 425, or about 0.7%. The gain was stronger than the prior 10-year average of 307. Over the past decade, the county has added inhabitants at a rate about half of Washington state (1.3% annual, simple average), but at the same rate as in the U.S.
All the gain can be attributed to in-migration.
In ECONOMIC VITALITY:
Median household income (MHI) in 2024 was statistically the same as 2023.
Median household income comes from a survey fielded by the U.S Census, the American Community Survey (ACS). For one-year estimates, the geographical unit of measure consists of both Columbia and Walla Walla Counties. For income analysis, the median gives a better notion of the “middle” of the distribution than the average.
For 2024, the ACS estimated median household income of the two counties to be $72,892. This is a mere $80 greater than in 2023, certainly not enough to be statistically different. 2023 experienced a much larger jump from the prior year, at about $7,500.
MHI of the two counties remains below that of the U.S. and now represents 89% of the national MHI. Local MHI compared to that of the state yields a much smaller ratio.
Annual taxable retail sales slid last year but might be reversing the slide this year.
Sales hit $1.53 billion, a much higher number than the pre-pandemic level in 2019. But 2024 results represented a slight drop from the peak of 2022, which reached $1.56 billion. The local decline runs counter to the modest percentage gain of taxable retail sales statewide over the same period.
For the first half of this year, however, the relationship has flipped. In quarters one and two, taxable retail sales in the county came in at 4.7% and 10.4%, respectively, much higher than the gains experienced across the state. Will this outperformance characterize the second half of this year? At minimum, the good start sets up the county to show a decent increase over last year.
Annual taxable retail sales per capita in Walla Walla shows about the same “leakage” as before.
Residents shopping outside of their home” market may bring individual benefits but also collective costs. Dollars taken from local stores and spent out of county impact the vitality of a community’s retail offering. They also dent potential local government finances which, in this state, rely greatly on revenues from retail sales taxes. Of course, increasingly the largest alternative to local shopping is online purchasing. But tax revenue from these sales is now captured by local governments.
This indicator attempts to measure retail “leakage” by tracking per capita spending in the county compared to adjacent retail markets, in this case, Benton and Franklin Counties. If all counties experienced the same rate of local shopping, then one might conclude the “leakage” is minimal. The higher per capita retail sales, the less leakage there appears to be. For Walla Walla, the per capita figure excludes the Penitentiary population.
2024 represented a continuation of the trend over the past several years. Per capita spending at “retail trade” businesses amounted to $11,973 for Walla Walla. This was considerably below the spend in Benton County, at $13,560. Yet, retail spending leakage here seems less than Franklin County, where per capita expenditures were $10,301 last year.
The size of the labor force represents an important measure of the economic potential of a local economy. It consists of residents who have a job plus those who are seeking one (the active unemployed). The participation rate in the labor force represents the willingness of a given part of the population, here anyone 16 years or older, to engage in work for pay. It is expressed as the labor force divided the size of this population.
2024 continued the trend started during the pandemic. The county’s labor force numbered 29,327, about 1,200 fewer than in 2019. The participation rate in 2024 was 58%, down from the 2019 recent peak of 64%.
With a shrinking labor force, can the County maintain, let alone grow, its economy? Perhaps with the help of workers from nearby Tri Cities.
In ECONOMIC VITALITY cont:
Net jobs created by County firms and organizations slipped in 2024.
A central goal of all economic development is to foster job creation. Without strong job creation, it is unlikely that aggregate personal income will grow, influencing a variety of outcomes: retail spending, local government revenues, philanthropy, not to mention the self-esteem that usually accompanies paid work. This indicator tracks net job creation by measuring the average number on the payroll of county employing entities from one year to the next.
By this measure, 2024 was a challenging year. Only a net 59 jobs were added by county employers. It represents a drop of 221 from the prior year and a much larger drop from the recent peak in 2022, when 681 new net jobs were created. As the graph shows, the rate of job creation has also slumped statewide but not at the rate seen in Walla Walla County.
And this year? So far, data for only the first quarter have been released. The numbers don’t augur well: a drop of 182 from the Q1 of 2024.
Accommodation retail sales hit all-time peak in 2024 in the county.
Measuring tourism, or visitor spending more generally, is a difficult task since very few visitors are subject to spending surveys. Accommodation sales represent a relatively “clean” measure of visitor spending. In contrast to other areas of visitor spending such as at eating and drinking establishments, residents don’t dilute the results. Visitors seldom stay overnight at a hotel, B&B or campground. One can then view the trend of accommodation sales as “directional” for total visitor spending.
In 2024, spending at accommodation establishments hit a record $38 million. That is up from $29 million in pre-pandemic 2019, or cumulatively 31%. Until 2022, the year-over-year growth rates of accommodation sales here were equal to or higher than the state average. For 2022 and 2023, however, increases here were below the state rates. Last year the county returned to outperforming the state average.
For 2025, spending at county accommodation establishments has continued to climb. The first quarter notched an 11% jump, while the (much larger) second quarter brought a 3% increase.
In EDUCATION:
The county’s public high school graduation rate matched the state rate most recently.
Without an educated workforce, a regional economy typically has little chance of growing. (For economies tilted toward extractive industries, this may not be true.) A high school diploma is the first step in acquiring credentials, for both the student and the employer community, of a well-trained worker/workforce. And public-school districts receive their own scorecard for success in getting their students to this important milestone.
For school year 2023-2024, the county average, high school graduation rate from public schools was 83%. This represents the share of a 9th grade cohort who walks across the graduation stage four years later. The latest results are the 3rd best showing over the past 15 years, but there is little upward trend discernible over these years
For the past two years, the county average has stayed below the state average. In most years prior, the county average has been higher than the state average.
In HEALTH:
The number of residents with a disability continues to fall in the county, bucking national trend.
The American Community Survey of the U.S. Census tracks disability (self-described) by several categories: vision, hearing, cognition, ambulation, self-care and independent living. These conditions often lead people to leave work and for those of retirement age, impair their retirement.
The estimated number for the metro area in 2024 was 7,455, implying a rate 12.6% in the general population. This marks a steep decline from the peak observed in 2022, when the estimate for the metro (two county) area was slightly higher than 10,000 and a rate of 17%. For the first time in this series, the local rate is now below the state and national rates.
In HOUSING:
The county’s months’ supply of homes generally shows a market largely in balance.
The price of any market, and certainly in the market for single-family homes, depends on the forces of demand and supply. This indicator takes up the latter. The measure employed is the total supply of homes by three price categories by months, assuming that current sales rate prevails in the future. A market in equilibrium, where demand and supply are in balance, is often seen with supply at 6 months.
For the most recent quarter, ending this July, the price category with the highest supply in the county consisted of those homes listed for $0.5 million and up, at 8.2 months. Since the pandemic generally, this price category has shown a higher months’ supply than the other two categories, with a couple of exceptions. The supply of the price category $250,000-$499,999 has been much smaller and quite close to the supply of the price category $249,000 or less. For Q2 of this year, months’ supply levels were 3.0 and 3.2, respectively.
list updated 12.2.26