The Working Class in Austin by Numbers
Every once in a while I find myself doing my own little research projects for purely my own self-indulgence. This is one of them and maybe others will find it useful for your own purposes. (Still doing research on the racial, ethnic, gender etc demographics.) 555,010 Austinites earn less than $50,000 a year (65 percent of the workforce Union membership is a pitiful 2.5 percent half that of Texas's 4.5 percent average (which is less than half of the national average). 78,800 Austinites earn less than $21,000 a year. 61,370 Austinites make more than $100,000 a year. Real income has risen by 2.5 percent in the past four years—but housing prices have increased by 40 percent. 54.4 percent of the working class in Austin rent their housing. 16 percent of Ausinites work in traditional “blue collar” occupations (construction, warehousing, transportation, and manufacturing). The fast growing occupation by industry is logistics (warehousing and transportation) the sector creat