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Stephen Dunphy / Times staff columnist
The Newsletter: The state economy may be stalling again

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A report from the Office of Forecast Council, the state's chief economic agency, said general-fund tax collections were 2.1 percent lower than expected between Feb. 11 and March 10, a shortfall that indicates "the economy is still weak," according to the report.

Collections also include an unusually large $3.6 million audit payment, so the shortfall understates the weakness of economic activity. The council said that tax receipts can be quite volatile on a monthly basis and one weak month is not a cause for alarm. But it said that unless employment growth begins to improve as expected, revenue growth may remain weak.

The council said the growth in tax receipts for January was significantly less than the 5 percent average of the previous two months and was the weakest since March 2003.

Thailand may be the next country in Asia to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the U.S. The National Association of Manufacturers yesterday formed a U.S.-Thailand Free Trade Agreement Business Coalition to help push the deal forward.

The coalition is made up of approximately 100 U.S. companies led by such giants as FedEx, General Electric, Time Warner and Unocal. But given the political climate and the rising debate over trade and jobs, new trade agreements may be hard to get past Congress this year.

Agriculture and jobs are frequent stumbling blocks. Example? Thailand is one of six countries accused by the Southern Shrimp Alliance of hurting U.S. businesses and jobs by undercutting markets with cheap shrimp imports. The other countries involved are Vietnam, China, India, Brazil and Ecuador.

How many software jobs have gone overseas? A difficult number to pin down. But the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., said it had found evidence that points to a significant movement of U.S. software jobs to India.
 
U.S. jobs in software-producing industries declined by 128,000 between 2000 and 2004, while jobs such as programming and software engineering shrank by 154,000 from 2000 to 2002, the last year for which data were available, the institute said. Data from India show that professional jobs in its software export sector rose by 150,000 from 1999 to 2003. Given that about 68 percent of its software exports go to the U.S., the growth implies that Indian software jobs servicing the U.S. market have increased by roughly 100,000 over the past four years.

Tourism is big business and it is getting better, at least overall. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, direct sales of tourism-related industries in the U.S. increased by 3.4 percent during 2003 to $387.3 billion. The improvement followed two years of decline brought on by the 2001 recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, and the war on terrorism. Tourism-related sales peaked in 2000 at $395.7 billion and fell to $374.7 billion in 2002.

But the two largest industries still report problems. At $105.7 billion, sales at hotels and other lodging places were still about 8 percent below the $115 billion recorded in 2000. Airlines were even farther in the red with "air transportation" industry sales of $96 billion in 2003 down by 19 percent compared to 2000.

Stephen H. Dunphy's columns appear Tuesdays-Fridays and Sundays. Phone: 206-464-2365. Fax: 206-382-8879. E-mail: sdunphy@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

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