Seattle Employment Improving Faster than US and WA

By request from the comments on Friday’s post, here’s a look at just the Seattle area’s employment situation.

First up, year-over-year job growth, broken down into a few relevant sectors:

After getting hammered harder than every other industry during the housing bust, construction employment is showing the biggest gains in 2012. Every sector we track is growing at a decent rate.

Here’s a look at the overall Seattle area unemployment rate compared to the national rate:

The Seattle area is doing much better than Washington State or the nation as a whole, with June coming in at 8.2% for the US, 8.3% for Washington, and just 7.2% for the Seattle area.

Overall things are better for Seattle on the jobs front. We’re still not back to “normal” levels, but we’re getting there a lot more quickly than many other regions.