Tacoma	City of Destiny? Tacoma's nickname is starting to fit
	Tacoma / Pierce County profile

Where the jobs are
Pierce County's unemployment rate is beginning to return to the levels of a year ago. Service sector and government jobs play a big role.

Pierce County's unemployment rate: The unemployment rate has always been higher in the Tacoma area in part because of the way military personnel are counted. However, the county's jobless rate is declining at a faster rate than elsewhere in the Puget Sound region.

Where the jobs are: Pierce County once had the reputation of being a blue-collar area. Manufacturing, the usual definition of a blue-collar job, now represents only 15.8 percent of the work force. It was more than 20 percent in the 1970s.

Total number of jobs in Pierce County: 244,900

Job growth, declines more subdued: Pierce County's economy does not have quite the ups and downs of King County's. A look at job-growth rates shows that the Tacoma area did not boom in the late 1990s as the Seattle area did, but it did not suffer losses to the same extent, either. The number of jobs has not declined and is not expected to this year.

Percentage change in job growth