State jobless rate drops to 8.9% in July

Unemployment in Washington fell to 8.9 percent in July, the fourth straight monthly decline and the lowest rate since April 2009, the state Employment Security Department reported Tuesday.

But even as unemployment dipped, so, too, did the ranks of the employed. Payrolls fell 2,300 between June and July as an estimated 5,400 government jobs — most of those tied to the census — were eliminated.

Together, the data suggest rising numbers of discouraged residents have stopped looking for work amid "tepid growth," said David Wallace, the state's acting chief labor economist.

"We were showing signs of fairly consistent growth earlier in the year," Wallace said. Now, "I'm reading it as pretty neutral as opposed to getting overly excited."

An estimated 306,218 people in Washington were unemployed and looking for work, officials said. There were 239,773 people receiving unemployment benefits from the state last month.

At a downtown Seattle employment office Tuesday, Luther Hester, 49, was filling out an application for a nonunion framing job.

After a prosperous five-year run in Las Vegas, the journeyman carpenter moved to Seattle in January and put himself on five different out-of-work lists maintained by local unions.

His position on the lists: The lowest is 25, highest is 236, he said.

Hester, who's living in transitional housing, said he's not worried. He won't consider jobs as a laborer.

"I'm a skilled carpenter. I ain't no laborer," Hester said. "That's why I went to school, to not be a laborer."

Sitting next to him was Tim Mains, a young man in T-shirt and shorts. Mains said that after he dropped out of college he'd bounced between different jobs over the past four years, most recently working for a carpet-cleaning company.

"I'm certified to work on tugboats," Mains said, but he couldn't find a job. He, too, has been on an out-of-work list at his local union for eight months.

The state jobless rate, adjusted to reflect seasonal variations in the labor force, fell from an upwardly revised June rate of 9.0 percent and is down from 9.2 percent in July 2009.

Across Washington, the private sector added a net 3,100 jobs last month and 21,100 jobs since the beginning of the year.

Transportation, warehousing and utilities led with 1,000 new jobs, followed by 900 in construction and 900 in education and health services. The retail trade picked up 600 jobs; wholesale, 500; information, 300; and mining and logging, 200.

Manufacturing, a sector hit hard by the recession, lost 700 jobs, as did the financial sector, down 500 jobs. The leisure and hospitality sector lost 100 jobs.

Over the past 12 months, Washington had 14,500 fewer nonfarm jobs, a 0.51 percent decrease — compared with a 0.04 percent decrease nationwide.

Only four sectors saw job growth over the past year: education and health services; professional and business services; retail trade; and mining and logging.

A broader joblessness measure — one that includes discouraged and other "marginally attached" workers, as well as part-timers who'd rather be full time — suggests the state's jobless rate is 17.4 percent, compared with 16.8 percent nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For that reason, even temporary, minimum-wage jobs are hot. Cleaning barns, serving scones and doing other low-skill jobs at the Puyallup Fair pay $8.55 an hour. More than 5,000 have applied for 3,000 jobs, said fair spokeswoman Karen LaFlamme.

Last year the fair's office had to turn away more than 1,000 people the first day it began taking applications, LaFlamme said. To avoid that, this year the fair took applications only online.

The biggest problem?

"It'd be nice if everyone could check their e-mails," LaFlamme said.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com