Unemployment Spikes Across the Northwest

Unemployment rates spiked in the final month of 2008, as jobless rates in Washington, Oregon and Idaho all went up up dramatically.

Just this week, Washington State reported a 0.8% increase in its December unemployment to 7.1%, just a tad below the 7.2% national rate. While still slightly better than many areas in the country, the worst is yet to come for the region. Oregon’s unemployment rate in December also shot up to 9.0%, a dramatic rise from year-earlier levels.

What a difference just a few months make! Last summer, the Seattle area maintained a 3.5% seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, and actually below jobless rates of late 2007. Today that rate is 6.2% (12/08 data). Not bad though, considering the unemployment rates for Washington (7.1%), Oregon (9.0%) and the U.S. (7.2%) are much worse off.

Oregon has been particularly hard hit. In the past year, unemployment has soared from 5.7% in November 2007 to 9.0% a bit over a year later. In the past year, only government, heath and education employment are up in Oregon. The next strongest is high tech, at -1.9% in job “growth.” Construction and manufacturing have taken a hard hit, down 12.1% and 14.5% respectively.

Idaho had been the employment shining star of the region at “only” 6.6%, but it has taken the hardest fall of the three northwest states on a percentage basis over the past year. At 6.6%, Idaho’s 12/08 unemployment rate is up from only 2.7% in December 2007! The current 6.6% rate is also a 15-year high in Idaho, so it has been hit hard, despite its seemingly overall low rate of joblessness.

And the worst is yet to come. Keep in mind the December figures don't even include a bevy of recently announced layoffs (Boeing, Microsoft, etc.), the 1/1/09 effective date of many of the WAMU layoffs, and the trickle-down impact of these and other jobs cuts in the past couple of months.

We at AHRS expect the employment picture to worsen for at a minimum several more months, and then to stay in recessionary territory for many months after the overall economy bottoms and starts to recover.