Wash. April jobless rate drops to 9.2 percent

Published 11:00 am Tuesday, May 18, 2010

OLYMPIA — The state’s unemployment rate fell to 9.2 percent in April and employers added about 5,800 jobs.

The three-tenths of a percentage point drop announced Tuesday is the largest in a while. There were smaller decreases in both July and November of last year.

Economists said today that the state has added jobs in three of the first four months of this year, for a net gain of 14,800 jobs so far.

Still, overall, the state had 48,400 fewer jobs last month than in April 2009, a 1.7 percent decrease. Nationally, employment declined by 1.7 percent over the past year.

Nearly 307,000 people in the state were unemployed and looking for work and more than 277,000 people received unemployment benefits last month.