EVERETT — With the county’s unemployment rate rising to nearly 10 percent, job seekers filed into the local WorkSource office Tuesday.
“I thought I’d have a job by now,” said Steven Briggs, who has been unemployed for five months. The Everett resident uses WorkSource’s computers several times a week to search for janitorial and maintenance jobs.
About 38,020 Snohomish County residents who are unemployed likely share similar hopes of finding work.
The county’s jobless rate increased to 9.9 percent in February from 8.5 percent in January, according to an Employment Security Department report released Tuesday. The unemployment rate hasn’t been this high since April 1984, when it hit 10.1 percent. And it isn’t likely to drop over the next few months, said Donna Thompson, a labor economist with the state.
“I just don’t know how bad it’s going to get,” she said.
The county’s soaring ranks of unemployed workers doesn’t include those who have received pink slips from the Boeing Co., Snohomish County’s largest employer. Boeing began handing out 60-day layoff notices to workers in late January. More than 1,360 Boeing employees in the Puget Sound region have picked up pink slips in the first two months of 2009. The next round of layoffs by Boeing comes Friday.
Snohomish County lost about 200 aerospace jobs in February, though Thompson suspects the majority were from Boeing’s suppliers in the region, not from the jet maker. The employment services sector, which includes contractors, shed 400 positions last month. And the automotive sector dropped 300 jobs.
“People aren’t buying cars, so dealers are laying off people,” Thompson said.
Snohomish County’s unemployment rate has outpaced the state’s over the last few months. Washington unemployment increased to 8.4 percent in February, from 7.8 percent in January. The state lost an estimated 28,200 nonagricultural jobs, seasonally adjusted.
Gov. Chris Gregoire said the increasing unemployment rate underscores “the fundamental economic challenges we face.”
“Behind the numbers are the men and women of Washington state who are struggling to meet their mortgages or rent payments, feed their families and pay their bills,” Gregoire said in a prepared statement.
In January, Gregoire proposed a state stimulus plan she said would encourage consumer spending and create jobs. Gregoire wants to create thousands of jobs over the next two years by speeding up construction projects, especially at colleges and universities. One portion of her plan, to temporarily increase unemployment benefits, was signed into law last month.
Thompson is waiting for stimulus efforts to ripple down to the local level.
“The financial sector has to stabilize so people can get loans and build houses,” she said.
With so many residents who work in Seattle, Snohomish County needs the housing market to improve to see real gains in employment. Construction jobs increased slightly in February but Thompson isn’t banking on a housing rally in the short term.
“We’ve got another six months before we see blue skies,” she said.
Read and listen to local people’s unemployment stories, or find job seeking help, at heraldnet.com/joblosses.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Michelle Dunlop: 425-339-3454, mdunlop@heraldnet.com.
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