More mortgage job losses for Washington State:
Washington Mutual Inc., the nation’s largest savings and loan, notified 1,400 workers in Washington and Florida on Tuesday that they will lose their jobs as part of the company’s cost-saving strategy.
About 850 workers at the company’s call center in the Seattle suburb of Canyon Park were told they will be laid off by the end of July, spokeswoman Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot said.
…
"It’s part of our strategy announced last year to move back-office jobs to lower-cost locations," Donahoe-Wilmot said.
I certainly wouldn’t call a shifting of employees from one part of the country to another much of a portent of industry trouble, but it still translates to 850 jobs lost in Washington, and at least bears mentioning.
(Associated Press, Seattle P-I, 05.23.2006)