Seattle Unemployment Rate = 3.9%
The unemployment rate in Seattle declined by 0.1% in July to 3.9%, which is extremely good. From talking to recruiters for Professionals in the Finance & Accounting industry (which I am in) was less than 1.0% last month from their surveys to businesses.
Thats what I call a good economy in the Seattle Region! Will this stop the housing prices in Seattle from declining, hells no, but will reduce the rate of decline since more people are moving here and obtaining jobs! Just look at MSFT, they increased the # of FTE's by 7.1% in WA State within the last year (not counting the increase in contract workers)...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... obs15.html
State employers added 7,800 jobs last month, seasonally adjusted, on top of 6,000 new hires in June.
Agency Director Karen Lee noted that Washington employers added about 7,800 net new workers last month, bringing the 12-month total to more than 89,000.
Industries with the largest gains last month were government, with 2,600 new jobs; professional and business services, 1,500; and manufacturing, 1,000. Construction companies hired an additional 500 workers. Payrolls haven't declined here since July 2006, despite a national slowdown in construction since February.
Layoffs were reported in leisure and hospitality, down 700 jobs; retail trade, down 200; and education and health services, down 100.
In the past year, nonagricultural job growth has risen by 3.1 percent, compared with a national increase of 1.4 percent.
Thats what I call a good economy in the Seattle Region! Will this stop the housing prices in Seattle from declining, hells no, but will reduce the rate of decline since more people are moving here and obtaining jobs! Just look at MSFT, they increased the # of FTE's by 7.1% in WA State within the last year (not counting the increase in contract workers)...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... obs15.html
State employers added 7,800 jobs last month, seasonally adjusted, on top of 6,000 new hires in June.
Agency Director Karen Lee noted that Washington employers added about 7,800 net new workers last month, bringing the 12-month total to more than 89,000.
Industries with the largest gains last month were government, with 2,600 new jobs; professional and business services, 1,500; and manufacturing, 1,000. Construction companies hired an additional 500 workers. Payrolls haven't declined here since July 2006, despite a national slowdown in construction since February.
Layoffs were reported in leisure and hospitality, down 700 jobs; retail trade, down 200; and education and health services, down 100.
In the past year, nonagricultural job growth has risen by 3.1 percent, compared with a national increase of 1.4 percent.
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Anyways, it's nice to see that people still have jobs in this area, but it would be a lot more valuable to see statistics on what caliber of jobs people have than to see one unemployment number. E.g. 4% unemployed, 30% working near minimum wage service jobs, etc.
Software Design Engineer in Test
Job Description: Software Design Engineer in Test (SDET): You build it to break it. SDETs are developers who design, develop and maintain automation systems—often expandable suites containing multiple automation programs—to be used by the development and test teams. SDETs are responsible for utilizing innovative test technologies to develop a product's testing strategy, and for facilitating the creation and execution of automated test suites across a diverse set of technologies. SDETs enjoy tremendous job variety and the opportunity to design wide-reaching tools. Responsibilities: Design and develop tool architecture; write automation systems and device drivers; author test plans and cases; conduct security and stress tests; debug at source level; identify, investigate, and prioritize
who are you trying to convince? others on the board, or yourself?
do you remember this chart? You should. I posted in on a thread 3 months ago when you posted about the unemployment rate (and oh, BTW, it was lower then)
your homework
1. note what happens each time unemployment hits cyclical lows
2. ask yourself if this is a good thing?
3. read the walmart press release from yesterday
why don't you crow about the stock market too?
The Detroit area is having massive layoffs in the auto industry, thus the housing prices have declined. Seattle is having an increase in employment, thus able to have a stronger housing base due to more jobs.
Once all the condos in Bellevue and Seattle come on the market prices will surely soften due to the massive increase in demand. In the long run it will be good for Seattle as the development will create the base housing for Seattle to expand and become a more dense city (thus increasing property values in the future, as it has been proven that the denser the population of a city is the higher the property values).
Gangbuster Job Growth, Lackluster Incomes
are the new jobs automagically paying a living wage now?
Actually, that seems quite similar to what I would have expected. Would you be able to characterize most of those jobs to being in a given department, or is it more of an across the board movement? I.E. is Microsoft getting bugs out of Vista still, or are they just becoming more motivated to get rid of the "Works fine in version 5" label off their back?
For those who aren't nerdy enough, keep in mind that software test jobs are good compared to service jobs, but are not very high on the hog. Generally these are very challenging jobs, with little recognition, and most of the time you are reporting failures to supervisors as opposed to progress. In other words, I see a lot of people get burned out quickly in that line of work.
So it appears that you are predicting an unemployment rate of ~7% in the next year or two. My guestimate is that it will gradually tick up to ~5%ish and stay in the 4% to 6% window.
My main point is that in the city of Seattle the unemployment rate is currently 3.9% and less than 1% for higher quality Finance/Accounting jobs. The growth rate in jobs was 3.1% last year. While many of them are lower paying there are also a significant amount of higher paying jobs moving here as well.
LHR - Due to the lower unemployment rate it increases workers ability to obtain higher paying jobs (more companies demanding quality workers).
Take my current job that Im leaving at AT&T next week, I was offered a $10/hr raise to stay, however I found a position at a company in the industry (as a Relator, jk) where I want to make my career (and is a $10/hr raise as well). People in demand in the Seattle economy can ask whatever they want if they do a good job and earn their keep.
Sorry, but anecdotal evidence doesn't sway me. New jobs in Seattle don't affect homesales, as this area has been priced beyond entry level for at least 2 years. While you may be in a position to command a better paying job, those in newly created positions don't usually have that luxury. And it is the interest rate on resetting ARM's that is driving foreclosure this time around, rather than unemployment. Which makes the entire argument moot.
Unemployment will spike when the housing market and related industries finish crashing.
It's called a recession...
I can see you didn't do the homework. Let's see what Wal-Mart had to say yesterday when they cut their full year earnings outlook...
Does that sound like they expect 3% GDP growth and low unemployment? Not to me. These guys are smart, and they don't like to tell the market they aren't going to hit their numbers. And Wal-Mart has what, 40% of US retail sales? something huge like that. Here's what Yahoo had to say
Well, that barometer is dropping, and looking at the unemployment rate TODAY is about as good of an indicator of economic health as looking at where the Dow is - or was yesterday. It's about useless as a leading indicator of economic health.
Take Detroit for example, lets suppose that the US Auto industry was extremely strong and the US Airplane industry (Boeing) was extremely weak (like Airbust is currently). Would we have record forclosures in Detroit, or would the Real Estate market be stable (relatively to the rest of the nation like Seattle) or in the dulldrums???
The result would be a horrible market in Seattle and a stronger economy in Detroit...so it does make a difference. And no Im not saying that Boeing is the only company holding up the WA economy, just using it as a regional industry example since the US Auto industry has caused that specific region of the US to slide into a recession.
My main point is that as long as the regional economy stay strong it will soak up some of the pain in the local Real Estate market...it wont prevent a downturn, just provide a base that reduces the full frontal blow to the cajones, kinda like a cup & jock strap.
You still feel the pain but allows you to have children in the future. Detroit got neutered in comparison to what Seattle's Real Estate market will experience, (as in their economic base disappeared overnight). It would take MSFT to become obsolete for such an impact in this region to occur...and we know that will never happen (sarcasm)...hope not, due to Google.
Speaking of MS, they are already the next IBM. You can put that in the bank. They will probably be profitable for the next 50 years, even when the world switches over from Windows to some *nix. But the jobs they create are in a different class than they used to be. MS used to pump millionaires into the economy, now they pump higher than median wage workers. And it's likely that the most recent hiring booms are just a last ditch effort to do something to stop their slow fade from being top dog.
In the past this has been true. But it has no bearing on what is happening now. The housing crash in Los Angeles, Florida, Orange County, San Diego, Nevada, and elsewhere is a direct result of no one being able to get a loan large enough to buy a house in a hyper-inflated market. There are no Greater Fools left to provide a profit on the sale, and people are stuck in loans that have reset to a payment that is too high for them to pay. They have no choice but to default and either declare bankruptcy or accept foreclosure.
If you wish to indulge in a myopic vision of the world, that is your right. But don't argue about the color of an apple when we are talking about oranges.
I rarely see the actual team they are going to work for. But every once in a while I get someone who calls crying saying this is not the environment they were looking for and how much is it going to cost them if they quit before one year.
Do I read this to mean that when one hires with Microsoft, they sign a contract to work for at least one year? Or are there just some additional benefits (like computer hardware), that are discounted so long as you put in X months after the purchase? I am always a little interested to hear what it's like in Redmond, since I'm kind of in that line of work. Thanks!