The state Employment Security Department issued its employment report for October yesterday. The preliminary estimate is that seasonally-adjusted employment in Washington increased by 6,900 from September to October. The estimate of August to September job decline was revised to a loss of 1,400 jobs from the loss of 2,200 jobs previously announced.

In addition, benchmarking, the procedure through which ESD adjusts employment estimates to match employee counts from unemployment insurance tax returns (see this post), reduced employment level estimates for the months of June, July, August and September by 1,300.

The preliminary estimate of October's seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for the state is 5.2 percent. The estimate of September’s unemployment rate is unchanged at 5.2 percent.

Last month (here) I expressed worries about construction employment. My worries have been reduced somewhat by the fact that benchmarking has added 1,300 to the estimated level of construction employment in June and subsequent months.

The Monthly Employment Report for October is available here.