February jobless rate falls in Seattle, state

meshugy

February jobless rate falls in Seattle, state

The unemployment rate fell last month in both the Seattle metro area and Washington state as a whole, powered by continued job gains in retail, business services and construction.

the combined gains for the first two months of 2007 "look very good for the state," said Evelina Tainer, chief economist for ESD's Labor Market and Economic Analysis branch.

The construction sector continued to defy the housing slowdown, adding a seasonally adjusted 600 jobs in February and 11,200 over the past 12 months.

Aerospace, which is concentrated in metro Seattle, added 300 jobs in February for a seasonally adjusted total payroll of 76,900. That's the most aerospace jobs since May 2002, though still almost 40,000 below the peak payrolls of the early 1990s.

synthetik

That's great shug, but as The Tim and others have demonstrated on this blog time and time again, Employment rates and population gains have nothing to do with this current Real Estate Asset bubble - a direct result of the current credit/liquidity bubble which caused massive speculation and irrational exuberance in virtually all asset classes. Most noteably Real Estate.

Credit is now contracting thanks to the implosion in subprime and increasing government oversight.

In a normal market that was driven by fundamentals (supply and demand, as in the rental market) your article would have merit.

downpayment

I hear the jobs growth was attributable almost entirely to a regional effort by McDonalds to retrofit their deep fryers from trans-fat oils to work with non trans-fat oils. I also hear these people will be qualifying for mortgages on $350,000 houses within the next few months after they have saved their 20% down from the enormous paychecks they received from the conversion. We'll have to keep a watchful eye on their progress from loan approval to eventual foreclosure over the next several months.