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Unemployment rate climbs to 9.8 percent

Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner’s statement on the latest employment situation. In a nutshell, the commissioner reports: Nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in November (+39,000), and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent.  The jobless rate had been 9.6 percent in each of the prior 3 months.  Payroll employment has increased […]

One More Time: Revenue Forecast Reduced Again

The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council met yesterday and adopted revised forecasts of general fund revenues for the current (2009–11) and upcoming (2011–13) biennia. For 2009–11, the new forecast is $28,127 million, a decrease of $385 million from the September forecast. Of this decrease, $64 million is due to the passage of Initiative 1107, which […]

Economic and Revenue Update

The state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (EFRC) yesterday issued its monthly Economic and Revenue Update (available here). The November Update is the second since EFRC’s September revenue forecast, and, as was the case in October, collections have come in above forecast. Major General Fund-State (GF-S) revenues for the October 11, 2010 – November 10, […]

Employment Growth: Metro Seattle vs. the Bay Area

The chart below compares job growth since 1990 in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Employment is seasonally adjusted and indexed so that in each case the January 1990 value is equal to 100. The Seattle MSA (comprising King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties) had 28.1 percent more jobs in August […]

June Economic and Revenue Update

Last Friday, the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (EFRC) posted its monthly progress report, the Economic and Revenue Update, for June. The update sets the stage for Thursday, when EFRC will issue its quarterly update to the state revenue forecast. The U.S. economy has performed largely as anticipated in the February forecast, The economic recovery […]

Seattle Lost More Than 23,000 Private Sector Jobs Between March 2008 and March 2009

The Puget Sound Regional Council has posted estimates of employment in March 2009 for the cities in the four-county PSRC region here. From March 2008 to March 2009, the number of private sector jobs in the city of Seattle fell by 23,173 (5.6%), from 415,165 to 391,992. Of the lost jobs, 3,729 were in construction. […]

Unemployment Insurance Burden

This table compares the unemployment tax burden in Washington with that in other states.

Challenging Times for Refiners

These are challenging times in the oil refining industry, as an article on the front page of the business section of today’s New York Times documents (Chilly Climate for Oil Refiners). Five U.S. refineries have shut down in the past year. The recent closings signal the end of a period from roughly 2004 to 2008, […]

FIFO or LIFO

I have been optimistic that this would be a LIFO recession. Washington was one of the last states to go into recession. It has been my belief that Washington would be one of the first states out and that over the next several years Washington would out perform the rest the nation as a whole […]

Another Collections Shortfall

The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council (EFRC) issued its monthly update late this afternoon. The document is available here. These three bullets from the update summarize the key takeaways: While our economic forecasts have been accurate, our models appear to be overforecasting revenue. To be fair, these are unprecedented times, and continued weakness in consumer […]