Self-sufficiency report reveals obstacles facing Wyoming workers, families

GREYBULL — A single parent of one preschooler and one school-aged child in Big Horn County must earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic necessities and meet the monthly cost of living, according to a report released last month by the Wyoming Women’s Foundation.

The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency report, a 114-page document compiled by researchers to assess economic security and how to best achieve prosperity, highlights the financial difficulties facing the average Wyoming family.

The report examines the minimum income required to realistically support a family without external support such as EBT or government subsidized housing.

The report’s standards vary based on family configurations (the full report has assembled data on more than 700 possible family types) as well as geographic location.

Teton County had the highest standard at $99,995 annually (more than $45 per hour) for a single parent household with two children, while Goshen County’s standard was the most affordable relative to the rest of the state. In Goshen County, a single parent with a pre-schooler and school-aged child must earn $53,509 annually, or roughly $25 per hour, to meet the self-sufficiency standards laid out in the report.

The report originated during former Gov. Dave Fruedenthal’s tenure, with the first report being released in 2005. Following a second report in 2007, the state discarded the practice.

The Women’s Foundation, working with researchers from the University of Washington, brought back the report in 2016, believing it to be a helpful measure to track affordability and economic security throughout the state.

The foundation, which invests in economic self-sufficiency and opportunities for women and girls across Wyoming, has since produced reports in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

Between the time the report originated in 2005 and its latest iteration in 2024, annual earnings have risen dramatically, but so too has the average cost of living.

It is difficult to determine – based on the number of variables and relativity between family types, geography and report years – whether a given year's findings are either “good” or “bad.”

The report also does not take extra expenses into consideration, such as restaurant meals, entertainment like movies or concerts, or extracurricular activities that may have an enrollment fee.

What the report can confirm with its conservative dataset is that the number of children in a household does make a difference: households with a single parent and one preschool-aged child in Big Horn County needed to earn $48,278 annually to meet their basic needs, more than $12,000 less than their peers with two or more children.

The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Labor and Education committees are expected to continue their discussions on both childcare and early childhood education. The state may also consider policy initiatives such as tax credits, child-care subsidies and Medicaid expansion to address the rising cost of having a family.

The full report is available at selfsufficiencystandard.com/wyoming.