Written by The News Tribune’s Debbie Cockrell. Published on The News Tribune on June 7, 2019.

Portions of Pierce and South King County are getting wealthier.

From 2012 to 2017, the Tacoma metro and surrounding area, which includes some of South King County, have seen the number of high-earning households, those that make $200,000 a year or more, grow from 14,594 to 24,137.

That’s according to census data and numbers compiled by data and analytics consulting firm Webster Pacific, based in San Francisco.

Not all of the high-earning households are new, the researchers said. Some of them could have been in the area before 2012 and experienced wealth growth.

Yet, as Seattle’s housing market has continued to push more home buyers southward, some neighborhoods on the outskirts of Tacoma’s metro area have been among those to see the most growth since the market rebounded after the Great Recession.

The accumulation of wealth leads to affordability concerns and raises questions about what is happening to the local economy.

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