Donna Thompson knew that Snohomish County’s employment picture was falling apart last month when many stores started laying off workers long before the Christmas season was over.
“They had to cut back because the sales just weren’t there,” said Thompson, a labor economist for the state Employment Security Department.
During a time when stores typically are at their peak, the county’s retailers cut 300 workers.
That’s hardly a surprise given the poor Christmas sales, but Thompson said the speed of the cutbacks last month in nearly every sector of the local economy “was pretty drastic.”
Snohomish County lost an estimated 3,680 jobs in December as the unemployment rate here hit 7.1 percent last month. That’s up from 6.2 percent in November.
While retailers cut 300 jobs, restaurants and bars went even further, putting 500 of their employees out of work. Construction, which has slashed 2,900 jobs during the past year, cut another 200 last month and the professional and business services sector lost 300 workers.
“What’s happening is that consumers are obviously tightening their belts,” Thompson said. “We’re seeing this is restaurants, particularly nice restaurants. If people do go out, it’s for fast food.”
Thompson noted that one of the few bright spots in the economy last month was in the aerospace industry, which added 300 new workers. She noted that the Boeing Co. recently announced that it would be laying off 4,500 people in its commercial division this spring.
“The sun is setting on that bright spot,” Thompson said, adding that each job at Boeing creates another at a different aerospace company and still another in the general economy.
Expected cutbacks at Microsoft Corp. could also affect the county because many of its workers live here.
Thompson noted that with the Boeing cutbacks, the area will need to see significant changes in the national economy before things improve here.
The biggest problem right now, she said, is uncertainty.
“Uncertainty is one of the hardest things for people to deal with,” she said. “They’ve seen the price of their houses go down, they’ve seen their 401(k)s take a hit and they’ve seen it become a lot harder to get credit. All of that will lower spending.”
Thompson said improving the construction industry is key because so many different business sectors are tied to it, from retail to a variety of professional services.
“I look at construction as kind of the canary in the coal mine,” she said. “It’s just one number (of lost jobs), but when construction started going down, I knew the whole mess would hit.”
Statewide, the unemployment rate was also 7.1 percent in December, up from 6.3 percent in November.
“In barely a year, we’ve gone from historically low unemployment to record numbers of people applying for unemployment benefits,” said Karen Lee, the state employment security commissioner.
In Snohomish County, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in December 2007. Then, there were 15,400 people on unemployment. Last month, the number was 27,140.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
