Time once again to take a look at the breakdown of what sectors are adding jobs locally and what sectors are losing jobs.
First up, year-over-year job growth, broken down into a few relevant sectors over the past four years.
The “Finance / Real Estate” sector had been growing by as much as five percent about a year ago, but as of August has slowed to just 0.1 percent year-over-year growth. Construction is still the fastest-growing sector, but growth has tapered off there in recent months as well.
Let’s take a look at just the “Real Estate and Rental and Leasing” sector of jobs.
After hitting 4.5 percent in June, real estate job growth had rapidly dropped to just 1 percent as of August.
Next, here’s a zoomed in view of the sector-by-sector breakdowns so you can see what’s going on lately:
With 8.9 percent year-over-year growth in August, the construction sector continues to turn in strong gains, even though it has backed down from 11 percent growth in June.
Almost every sector we look at is still gaining jobs in the Seattle area. The one exception is manufacturing, which has been shedding jobs for ten months in a row.
Overall year-over-year job growth for the Seattle area continues to hold steady around 3 percent.
- Seattle-Area Job Levels: Washington State Employment Security Department
Remember About Five Years Ago
When I warned the Boeing Space Center Kent facillity was to be bulldozed and the 26 acres sold. Take a look, most of it was.
Construction is building a large cement structure there as they wiped out the relatively newly built Boeing office complex [and buildings behind it]. I imagine the newly built “carless” Amazon condos for the workers [serfs, LOL] near Lake Union created construction jobs too. My sister taught English at Beijing China in the 90s and MASSIVE bland “carless” small cement cubby-hole apartments with central controlled heat [she almost froze to death there BTW] were the population living quarters. They pack ’em in there and they have no resources to travel very far either.
Yes, construction is remodeling Seattle for the future.
S&P C/S Index? Forget it. When I need to gauge housing market frothiness, I just go up to my favorite ‘establishment’ on Lake City Way and poll its ‘contractors’ as to how many of them are working on their real estate license. Much more accurate. My research tells me that things are winding down.
Mortgage applications are at 1995 levels. I can’t imagine why that would drive people out of an industry that preys like vultures on the now virtually non existent Mortgage App crowd.
I sure wish tech jobs were broken out separately . . . .