Closing in on full employment

Continued hiring by the Boeing Co. and a host of other Snohomish County businesses sent the local jobless rate into a tailspin in April, state officials reported Tuesday.

The county’s unemployment rate, already low at 4.7 percent in March, dropped seven-tenths of a percentage point to 4.0 in April, according to the Employment Security Department.

The 4.0 percent rate is considered by some to be full employment, but labor economist Donna Thompson said it’s too early for that sort of talk.

“I think the drop was a little steep,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see a slight correction next month.”

Thompson, who studies the county’s job scene for Employment Security, said she’d want to see several months of a 4.0 percent jobless rate before she declared things close to full employment, meaning most of the people who want jobs and are capable of doing them have work.

“Full employment means different things to different people,” she said. “We’re certainly starting to see signs of it. There are hiring signs in a lot of windows and some people are having trouble filling positions.”

Jobs hard to fill right now are qualified machinist positions and some of the lower-paying labor jobs. “We’re starting to see that in some of the low-end jobs,” Thompson said. “Some of them are quite physically demanding and when they aren’t paying enough, people look for a higher wage.”

Most of the key industries in the county added jobs or kept employment at a high rate in April. They included aerospace, garden stores, building materials shops and restaurants and taverns.

Snohomish County added 600 jobs in April, continuing at a relatively high rate of job growth – 5.1 percent. The state is growing at a rate of 3.4 percent.

Thompson expects the job growth and the low jobless rate to continue.

“I would expect it to average 4.2 or 4.3 percent,” Thompson said of the jobless rate.

Herald writer Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.