Newly released wage data shows that pay for most Washington state residents was keeping ahead of inflation last year, thanks to mind-boggling pay hikes for workers in science and technology fields.

The average pay for the average Washington worker increased 6.7 percent between Q3 '06 and Q3 '07. The statewide average paycheck (before taxes) was $878 a week, or $45,656 a year. It was a bigger than usual bump for this late in the year, state economists reported. Usually, there's a jump in pay during the first quarter, when companies typically pay out bonuses. The fact that this increase came during the fall suggests a really tight labor market.

Particularly for scientists, it would seem. The state reports the pay for professional, technical and scientific workers shot up 22.8 percent, year over year, to an average of $1,431 a week (or roughly $74,400 a year).

Information workers also saw their average paychecks climb 9.9 percent, to an average of $2,524 a week or about $131,250. (Trust me, that had to have been the software people. Us ink-stained-wretch types, who are also lumped into this segment, barely saw any raises at all last year.) And keep in mind, this is strictly wage data. It doesn't calculate the value of any stock options workers may have exercised over the year.

Oh, in case you're interested, company and nonprofit managers earned an average of $1,522 a week statewide ($79,150), up 5.9 percent.

Incomes aren't distributed equally around the state. King County's average wage (the state's highest) was $1,129 a week ($58,700). That's more than double the average paycheck in each of the 10 rural Washington counties where pay was lowest. (In order from the bottom: Okanogan, Douglas, Pacific, Wahkiakum, San Juan, Asotin, Skamania, Grant, Adams and Chelan.)

Income growth also was uneven. Walla Walla and Columbia counties both saw average wages jump more than 10 percent year-over-year. (Columbia's because of big increases for workers on major construction projects; Walla Walla's because of hikes for government workers at the state penitentiary, an Army Corps of Engineers district office and a Veterans Administration hospital.) Around Puget Sound, King and Kitsap counties saw average pay grow more than 8 percent; so did Ferry County east of the Cascades.

But in 13 Washington counties - including relatively urban Benton and Clark - average pay grew less than 4 percent, suggesting that workers were already having a hard time getting ahead before this winter's surges in costs of food and fuel. In Lewis County, wages had fallen 3.4 percent before December's flood, and average wages in Adams County, in rural eastern Washington, were up only 1.3 percent.