When the economy started to improve during the beginning of the year, we all called the recession over and looked forward to getting back to some measure of prosperity.
But the recovery has been slow, both nationally and in Snohomish County. And it appears to me that things have come back more quickly in the other Washington than they have locally.
There’s a lot of talk in the news over what’s being described as a jobless recovery, and that’s certainly what we saw last week with the release of the May unemployment statistics by the state Employment Security Department.
Things are better than they were a year ago, but not by huge margins. We’ve added jobs, but not a lot of permanent, good-paying positions. Things appear to be stabilizing in the county, but not really expanding.
“My overall sense is that things are leveling out,” said Anneliese Vance-Sherman, the employment security labor economist who crunches the numbers for Snohomish County.
She noted that fewer people are filing new unemployment claims, but that “more people are staying on unemployment insurance longer.”
The job numbers for May looked good on the surface, with the county adding about 2,800 jobs. But 2,100 of those were temporary jobs working on the census, so only about 700 of the new positions were in private industry. And even that’s no surprise.
“The largest growth sector was in tourism and hospitality, which is seasonally consistent with what we would normally expect,” Vance-Sherman said.
She noted that the economy hasn’t really been growing, but that at least for the last two months, it hasn’t been declining, either.
“In sum, the economy is flat right now,” she said.
Vance-Sherman noted that the county’s labor force has shrunk during the past year by about 3,000. That could mean that people have gone elsewhere to find work. It could also mean, she said, the discouraged job seekers are still here, but have taken themselves “out of the formal labor force.”
Vance-Sherman noted that employment in the goods-producing sectors of the county’s economy continues to drop, but appears to be leveling out a little. In April, it accounted for 67,600 jobs. In May, the number was 67,400. Construction jobs were steady in April and May. “This is not encouraging,” she said, “as we would normally expect employment in this sector to pick up in mid-spring.”
In the service side of the economy, jobs were up. But that’s mostly because of those census jobs we talked about. And those will disappear in a few months.
There had been some growth in educational and health-service jobs, but that growth appears to be slowing, Vance-Sherman noted.
So, at least in looking at the May numbers, the spring growth was pretty slow and not completely promising. But things are better now than they were a year ago. Since then, the county has added 2,300 jobs, even if most are temporary, Vance-Sherman said.
We’re not out of the woods yet. But it looks like we’ve certainly stopped the bleeding.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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