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Washington unemployment hits 9.3 percent

by David Krough

Posted on November 17, 2009 at 1:33 PM

Updated Tuesday, Nov 17 at 2:12 PM

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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The State of Washington’s unemployment rate increased to 9.3 percent in October, up from 9.1 percent in September.

Employment Security Department officials said the state lost an estimated 5,100 non-agricultural jobs in October, seasonally adjusted.

An estimated 310,984 people in Washington were unemployed and looking for work in October, nearly 229,000 received state unemployment benefits.

Clark County showed one of the highest rates of joblessess with 13.7 percent, according to The Columbian.
In Oregon, the October rate was 11.3 percent.

Year over year, Washington had 120,000 fewer jobs last month than in October 2008 -- a 4.1 percent decrease.  Nationally, employment declined by 4 percent over the past year, officials said.

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shallowend said on November 17, 2009 at 1:51 PM

But, I thought that Washington's policies were so much better and more business friendly then Oregon's. How could this be? Does this mean that the conservative pukes are (gasp!) wrong? Does this mean that the issue is (horrors!) more complicated then either the left or the right want us to think?

veganpeace said on November 17, 2009 at 3:19 PM

Here again, the long guilty tentacles of Bush/Cheney/Reagan and Josh Groban continue to wreck havoc on the working class as a result of their savage social scorched Mother-Earth policies. We in the Prog/Green/Red/Statist/Vegan tents throughout the NW can only continue to offer prayers to Goddess, that the wise enlightened and progressive policies of Co-Presidents Shelly and Barack Heath Nippon bowing Obama along with their brilliant architects Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid et all, will save us from this RethugliKKKan free market calamity.

himhandy said on November 17, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Washington is also 2B short on their budget. Where o where will that money come from?

corporatemom said on November 18, 2009 at 7:43 AM

Notice how the unemployment is higher in Vancouver (part of PDX metro area) as opposed to the rest of the state. Notice how unemployment in this country has gone above 8%. But wait - Obama said if his stimulus plan was quickly passed, it would prevent unemployment from going over 8%. Notice how unemployment in the past 10 months just continues to get worse.

shallowend said on November 18, 2009 at 8:15 AM

CorpMom - John Behner (R -Senate minority leader) said on January 30: "We don't need a stimulus of any kind because there is no way unemployment will ever reach 8 percent in my lifetime. This is just a small blip that we'll look back at and laugh about the overrreaction of the Democrats, particularly the President." (Special Orders) So I think its pretty clear that no one had a real handle on the situation back then. While I have no problem with the concept of stimulus spending (it did work in 1934-40), I have a problem with not defining a revenue stream to pay for it in advance. I'm an outspoken critic of borrowing in general, and of borrowing without a payback plan in particular. Having said that, I think that the jobs supported by the spending are worth having (in terms of the economy, a job is a job is a job) or the unemployment rate would be another 1-2% worse then it is.