Hunt for work harder as jobless rate rockets

Tuesday's job fair at Safeco Field opened at 10 a.m. Brian Braddock of Bremerton got there an hour and a half early.

Braddock, 47, had hoped to find a job that pays enough to support his wife and three teenage children. But shortly after the doors opened, he gave up for the day.

"The employers say they have jobs, but the jobs are only there if you have the exact qualifications," said Braddock, who made $42,000 a year installing dishwashers and now gets by on severance pay and unemployment insurance.

"At two-and-a-half months, I've put out probably 75 résumés and gotten two responses, both negative."

He has plenty of company. Washington employers cut their payrolls at a rate of 1,000 jobs a day last month, helping push the state's unemployment rate to its highest level since June 1985.

Adjusted for seasonal variations, the jobless rate shot up to 8.4 percent in February, the state Employment Security Department reported. That's six-tenths of a percentage point higher than January's rate, and well above the national unemployment rate of 8.1 percent.

All in all, 330,570 Washingtonians reported being out of work last month, the largest number on record and nearly 150,000 more than in February 2008.

And according to state forecasters' grim outlook, the picture won't begin to brighten until sometime late next year — after the jobless rate hits double digits.

"I don't see any turning points out there," said Mary Ayala, the state's chief labor economist.

In the Seattle metro area, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate jumped to 7.8 percent, from 6.7 percent in January and 4.1 percent in February 2008.

Ferry County in northeast Washington had the highest rate in the state last month, 14.8 percent. Whitman County, in the southeast corner and home to Washington State University, was lowest at 5 percent.

The downturn came to Washington a bit later than the national recession, which officially began in December 2007. But the state's employment situation has deteriorated faster.

As recently as February 2008, the jobless rate was near historic lows at 4.7 percent.

Washington's nonfarm payroll employment — often considered a better gauge of the local jobs picture than the unemployment rate — peaked in February 2008. Since then, state payrolls have shed a seasonally adjusted 97,100 jobs, for a 3.3 percent decline.

By contrast, in the first 12 months of the downturn that followed the tech collapse in 2000, state payrolls fell 2.6 percent, or 70,300 jobs.

Rush of jobless claims

Another sign of the bleak employment picture: First-time claims for state jobless benefits averaged 16,048 over the past four weeks — nearly twice the level of a year ago.

Nearly every private-sector employment category has cut jobs over the past year. Durable-goods manufacturing is down 13,200 jobs, 500 of them in aerospace. Retail is off 17,100 jobs, with car dealers the hardest hit.

Professional and business services — a catchall category that includes everything from law firms to temporary-help agencies to garbage haulers — is down 20,100 jobs.

Two sectors most closely linked to the real-estate boom, construction and financial services, have lost a combined 28,400 jobs the past 12 months. Residential construction alone has cut 13,700 jobs.

Financial services were one of February's few bright spots, adding 1,200 jobs on top of 600 in January.

Most of those came in a category that includes mortgage brokers; Ayala surmised that people are being added to handle a flood of new applications.

Crowded job hunt

Charles Weeks, of Puyallup, who was at the Safeco Field job fair, was laid off from a construction job in January and has yet to find work. For now, he said, he and his wife are relying on unemployment insurance and help from their local food bank.

"I went to take an electrician's apprenticeship test at the city of Puyallup a couple weeks ago, and there were 800 people there," said Weeks, 42. "You miss one question, and you know there's someone else who didn't. I'm hoping the economy turns around soon."

About 1,000 people turned out Tuesday for the job fair, said Katherine McGee, who organized the five-hour event for Norfolk, Va.-based Employment Guide. Participants could meet with about 20 employers, including the U.S. Army, the Border Patrol and Princess Cruises.

The latest official state economic forecast, released last Friday, has jobs shrinking and unemployment rising until early-to-mid 2010, with the jobless rate peaking at over 10 percent.

Any recovery is expected to be painfully slow. The state is not projected to gain back all the payroll jobs it has lost, and will lose over the coming months, until the third quarter of 2011.

Until then, competition for pretty much any job will be intense. Mokas Café and Coffee Bar in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood recently got 200 applications for a part-time barista job.

"I have a stack of résumés I haven't even read through," manager Krystyna Frahm said. "The most I ever received in the past was 50 résumés for a full-time position. Unfortunately, competition is stiff even for a part-time, minimum-wage job."

Drew DeSilver: 206-464-3145 or ddesilver@seattletimes.com

Amy Martinez: 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com