The state Employment Security Department issued its employment report for January this morning. The preliminary estimate is that seasonally adjusted employment in Washington grew by 3,800 from December to January. The estimate of November to December job growth was revised upwards from 4,800 to 6,700.. The estimated seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the state was 6.4 percent in January, a 0.3 point improvement from December.

The monthly report is available here.

I have noted frequently on this blog that initial employment are often revised (see this for example). This month’s report brought significant revisions to estimates for previous months. The first chart compares current estimates of Washington employment by month since 2000 with previously published estimates. In the December employment report, the employment security department estimated that the state had 2,945,500 jobs in December. In the January report the estimate of the number of jobs in December jumped to 3,010,200.

Much of this change is definitional.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is now including in its definition of non-farm employment people working for state government programs that provide in-home services for the elderly and disabled. (Generally, private household employment is excluded for the BLS definition of non-farm employment.) Inclusion of these workers adds about 44,000 to December employment in Washington, about two-thirds of the discrepancy. See the BLS discussion here. Most of the rest is due to the benchmarking process, under which initial employment estimates are reconciled with job counts derived from unemployment insurance tax returns.

Here is a second chart showing Washington employment relative to the peak reached before the Great Recession. According to the preliminary estimate, with the expanded definition of non-farm employment, as of January Washington had regained all of the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

Here’s hoping that this happy news isn’t revised away in upcoming months.