Here’s a significant Idaho number: 41%. That’s the portion of Idahoans who cannot easily live - where they are - on the income and resources they have.
This is stress and worse on a mass scale, and it involves a lot of people. And beyond that, it varies a lot by county in Idaho. All of this is worth keeping in the back of your mind in the months and years ahead - and whenever you hear about Idaho's economic miracle.
The numbers come by way of two national groups called Independent Sector and United for ALICE, which have pulled together numbers of people and households based on economic hardship, focusing not so much on people below the poverty level as those just above that, who all or nearly all work at jobs, but still struggle economically.
The groups describe it this way: “In 2023, according to the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), 10% of Idaho households were financially insecure. Yet this measure failed to account for an additional 31% of households that were also experiencing financial hardship. These households are ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — with income above the FPL, but not enough to afford basic expenses in the county where they live. Between ALICE households and those living in poverty, an estimated 41% of households in Idaho were below the ALICE Threshold in 2023. Households below the Threshold are forced to make impossible choices — like deciding whether to pay for utilities or a car repair, whether to buy food or fill a prescription.”
Whether a household fits into the category will vary by county because not only income is considered: Cost of living, which varies dramatically from place to place, is a factor too.
In Idaho, 10% of people are considered to be living with the poverty level, slightly lower than the national estimate of 13%. But what we might call the “working but struggling” come to 31% in Idaho, more than the national level (29%).
The report said, “In Idaho, average basic costs in the ALICE Household Survival Budget were $28,836 for a single adult and $80,124 for a family of four with two adults and two children in child care — much higher than the FPL [Federal Poverty Level] ($14,580 for an individual and $30,000 for a family of four). Basic costs varied substantially by county.”
So where are they and aren’t they?
The people who have a hard time economically seem mainly to be located about where you might expect.
The smallest percentages of the financially stressed (still at a significant 34%) are in Ada and Teton counties; the rest of the top 10 (or bottom 10) are Jefferson, Fremont, Oneida, Boise, Bingham, Latah, Blaine and Valley. Most are either counties with considerable per-capita wealth, like Blaine and Teton, or have strongly-growing upper-income suburb development, like Jefferson and Boise.
The county with the highest percentage of struggling households is a surprise: Madison County (61% below the “ALICE threshold"). It’s hard not to attribute that, though it seems odd, to the large number of students at Brigham Young University-Idaho, though why that group should be struggling much more than, say, University of Idaho students - Latah County ranked toward the other end of the list - is unclear.
The next nine counties fall into a clearer pattern: Butte, Washington, Camas, Clark, Lewis, Lemhi, Owyhee, Clearwater and Power. All (Power debatably excepted) are some distance from large population centers and aren’t seeing the kind of residential growth places like Valley or Jefferson have been. (The next five counties on the high-struggling roster - Custer, Idaho, Shoshone, Adams and Benewah - also fit the pattern.)
The most striking part of this is that most of those counties are among the least expensive - at least in terms of housing and some other basic needs - of any in the state. Housing and rent prices are lower there than in the fast-growth metros, and yet financial stress seems to be higher there, presumably because income is so far below what’s needed to comfortably live.
Idaho has low unemployment and a high growth rate. But those aren’t the only factors Idahoans should be thinking about as they consider the state of their economy, where it came from and where it’s going.