OLYMPIA — Washington’s unemployment rate jumped to about 6.3 percent last month — up by half a percentage point over September.
Overall, state officials say Washington’s economy lost about 23,000 nonagricultural jobs in October. Most of that was driven by the Boeing Machinists strike, which has now ended.
Officials say that without the strike, Washington would have actually gained about 800 jobs last month.
But the strike did not affect the unemployment rate, because state economists count striking workers as technically employed.
The September unemployment rate was 5.8 percent.
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