The local labor market continues to improve, but it’s still vulnerable to Covid-19.
According to the Washington State Employment Security Department’s King County labor area summary report from September 2021, the not seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in King County for Sept. was 4.3 percent, down from 4.8 percent reported in August.
Twelve months ago, while still in the grasp of Covid-19’s impact, unemployment was 7.2 percent. King County’s highest recent unemployment rate was 16.2 percent back in April of 2020 during the onset of Covid-19, with rates steadily dropping throughout that year to end at around 6 percent at the end of 2020.
The recent report reflects that King County’s labor force has expanded by 24,229 jobs, or 1.9 percent over the year. The total King County labor force stands at 1,314,931, with 56,006 currently unemployed.
Five major industries reported expanded employment over the month of September, with the largest gains being attributed to hiring in information and government-related jobs. Retail trade and professional and business services accounted for the largest number of jobs lost over the month.
Dr. Anneliese Vance-Sherman, a regional labor economist with the Washington State Employment Security Department, said King County weathered the pandemic as well as could be expected.
“In comparison to other counties, King County was relatively well positioned during the worst of the pandemic recession because King County has a large portion of jobs and workforce that were able to shift to telecommuting arrangements,” Dr. Vance-Sherman said.
She advised there were different impacts depending upon the industry.
“Some industries, such as information (including software publishers), were able to recover quickly because they could physically distance with minimal disruption to their work,” she said. “Other industries, such as leisure and hospitality (including restaurants and bars – especially in downtown areas) continue to struggle, as they are dependent on tourism and the physical presence of customers, in other words workers, in their vicinity.”
Labor market data show that the leisure and hospitality industry suffered the deepest job losses last year, from more than 175,000 jobs in mid-2019 to under 100,000 in early 2020.
Wholesale trade experienced the highest job growth at 8.5 percent for the year, with professional and business services experiencing 7.3 percent growth, and the information sector experiencing seven percent growth.
“The ability to work from home has been a large factor in terms of how people were economically able to get through the pandemic,” Dr. Vance-Sherman said.
She said there has been a shift over the past few years in seasonal hiring during the holidays.
“As online commerce has proliferated (even prior to the pandemic), we have seen increased seasonality in transportation and warehousing employment, not just retail stores,” she said.
Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc., a Chicago-based global outplacement and career transitioning firm, predicts retailers will add 700,000 workers in the U.S. during the holiday season.
They also estimate that the transportation and warehousing sector, with current total employment of 5.7 million (up 140,700 jobs from August 2019) will add approximately 190,000 seasonal jobs. This would be a significant drop from the 301,700 jobs this sector added last year.
As for specific companies, Amazon is hiring 150,000 seasonal workers nationally, UPS and Target have each announced they will add 100,000 seasonal jobs this year, and the United States Postal Service plans to add 40,000 jobs to handle their holiday needs.
Concerning future forecasted job growth for King County, the Employment Security Department medium-term projections call for the largest growth through 2029 to occur in the retail trade and information sectors at 3.5 and 3.7 percent respectively.
The same medium-term projections call for the slowest growth in the wholesale trade and manufacturing sectors, with manufacturing showing an estimated job loss of almost 1 percent through 2029.
The Employment Security Department’s forecasts can be reviewed at:
Although Dr. Vance-Sherman said she cannot offer a forecast for the job market over the next year or two, she said the job market will continue to affected by Covid-19.
“What I would point out is that the pace of recovery is highly correlated with the ebbs and flows of the pandemic itself,” she said. “The months with relatively low counts of Covid-19 cases tend to be the months with the highest growth, and the months that are characterized by rising case counts see lower job creation.”
“I expect that the pandemic itself will continue to affect the economic ecosystem,” she said.