Let’s take another look at the Seattle area’s employment situation.
First up, year-over-year job growth, broken down into a few relevant sectors:
Construction continues to post bigger gains than other sectors—up 8.9% year-over-year in October, versus an overall gain of 3.6%. Manufacturing has slipped somewhat in recent months, but is still the second-best-performing sector.
Here’s a look at the overall Seattle area unemployment rate compared to the national rate:
Unemployment fell in Seattle and Washington State from September to October, while it inched up slightly nationally. The Seattle area is still outperforming Washington State and the nation as a whole, with October unemployment coming in at 7.9% for the US, 8.2% for Washington, and 7.3% for the Seattle area.
At this rate it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Seattle area get down to six percent unemployment by this time next year.
- Seattle Unemployment: Washington State Employment Security Department
- Washington & US Unemployment: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Seasonally adjusted series used for all data sets.
+6-2
What’s the average salary looking like?
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It would be interesting to see other categories broken out. For example technology and health care.
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Technology unemployment must be below 5% considering the hard times companies are having finding engineers.
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I´m glad to hear this. But the chart speaks clearly. 8-9 % unemployment is way too big. Let´s see how Obama deals with this problem (I hope it won´t be this way).
Anyway, things are pretty calm in Vancouver, we are doing a bit better with 7.4% rate for October and we are also experiencing a steady increase in the wages. I´m less happy with the October Market Report, which shows the prices of housing are dropping too slowly. I hope further price corrections will continue.
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RE: siddharta @ 3 – I’d be surprised if it’s that high. Tim’s 6% overall by next year seems rather optimistic to me. But here’s to hoping.
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How be the labor force participation rate?
From WA State ESD: “The survey does not count people who have stopped looking for work.”
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RE: siddharta @ 3 – And of course, let’s not mention the hundreds (or low thousands) of people that Microsoft quietly lets go every single year, due to their infernal grade-on-a-curve performance review system. Getting a 4 or (God forbid) a 5 is the modern-day scarlet letter that makes you poison to other MS managers who have job openings.
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That’s weird, the Seattle Times reported today that King County unemployment fell to 6.5% in October – I wonder why their number is so much lower than the 7.3% Tim uses.
“Unemployment in King County fell to 6.5 percent in October, down from 6.9 percent the previous month, the state Department of Employment Security said Tuesday.”
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019722114_countyjobsxml.html
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RE: Chris @ 8 – Maybe “the Seattle area” is more than King County?
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RE: siddharta @ 3 –
LOL! that must be it. our kids these days, with $150k educations, just aren’t good enough.
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