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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Economy State Unemployment Rate Now 8.4 Percent

Posted by Eli Sanders on Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:30 AM

More than 28,000 payroll jobs evaporated from the Washington economy last month, helping to send the state's unemployment rate to its highest level since June 1985.

Adjusted for seasonal variations, the jobless rate shot up to 8.4 percent in February, the state Employment Security Department reported today. That's six-tenths of a percentage point higher than January's rate of 7.8 percent, and well above the national unemployment rate of 8.1 percent.

Just a year earlier, the state unemployment rate stood at 4.7 percent — clear evidence of how quickly Washington has been gripped by the recession.

In the Seattle metro area, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate jumped to 7.8 percent, from 6.7 percent in January and 4.1 percent in February 2008.

All in all, 330,570 Washingtonians reported being out of work last month.

Comments (7) RSS

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Eli,
I just read Oregon's unemployment rate is in double digits (10.8%). Yikes!

Posted by lark on March 17, 2009 at 11:40 AM

When can Democrats start to blame Obama for this?

Posted by Fucktard on March 17, 2009 at 11:41 AM

@2: When he approves funding to give free lobotomies to every citizen of this here United States allowing us to forget the 8 years of Bush administration policies which dug this gaping chasm of economic doom.

Posted by Yep.... You ARE a fucktard! on March 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM

Actually, business news is good today.

But you probably don't grok leading indicators.

The market absorbed the news that we have successfully avoided a Depression and now have only a reasonable length recession to deal with.

(sources: today's PI, today's Washington Post (yeah, I was Seattle, Zero Newspaper Town on the econ thread), and zillions of other reputable news sources you guys ignore)

Posted by Will in Seattle on March 17, 2009 at 1:49 PM

This disaster economy is like cleaning up bits of cat vomit all over your apartment. Unpleasant, some folks get the shaft and it's hard to know when you're done.

The lead-up was equivalent to your wife running screaming through your apartment holding a wretching cat, vomit dribbling down her arms. We were SO CLOSE to collapse, and while we're going to find bits of puke everywhere for weeks and weeks and weeks to come, we really came close to something monumentally bad that would have made this current situation (and the future tumbling of dominoes) look like a picnic in the park.

Posted by Baconcat on March 17, 2009 at 3:25 PM

@5 Nice analogy. Disturbing, but nice.

So does this mean that unemployment out here in the hinterlands - aka area code 509 - is really high? I mean, if it's 7.8% in Seattle metro and the statewide average is 8.4%, then it's 9% in the rest of the state, right? (Not so good at the math thing, which is probably why I live and work in the 509.)

Notwithstanding, I think I'm entitled to a hearty, self-righteous, "Fuck you Seattle, we have it worse!"

And we still have fucking snow on the ground!

Posted by TVDinner on March 17, 2009 at 5:25 PM

Here's the latest from the Washington state online unemployment filing website as of Sunday (when everybody is supposed to file their weekly claim) March 22, 2009:

https://fortress.wa.gov/esd/cc/iblWeb7-0…

The application you are attempting to access is unavailable

The agency application server that provides the function you are attempting to access is not available at this time.

This could be due to the server being offline or a network problem. It is not the result of an issue with the Fortress service.

Solutions

Please contact the support team for the application you are trying to reach or try again at a later time.

[none BUTTON]

Posted by SeaMonkey on March 22, 2009 at 12:35 PM