Decrease In Unemployment: A Good Sign

A lot of people have a hard time believing that the recession that took place in the United States was actually over and done with just about two years ago. While the recession ended over two years ago, it surely didn’t look or feel that way for a lot of different areas in the United States, especially Snohomish County. Finally, it seems that the County is seeing a change, with a jobless rate of 8.6 percent, an all-time low for the County since the recession took place, according to the Snohomish County Business Journal.

The Regional Labor Economist for the Employment Security Department, Anneliese Vance-Sherman, has said, “Although 8.6 percent is still regarded as a high unemployment rate, this is the lowest rate we have seen locally since late 2008.”

It is believed that there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made. It is true that 8.6 is still a high number of jobless individuals. However, because progress is finally being made, it is believed that this is a good sign of even better things to come.

In February 2010, Snohomish County actually reached an ultimately high jobless rate of 11.1 percent. The jobless rate seemed to stagger and stay at 10 percent for quite a while. It has been difficult for the jobless rate to decrease as the number continued to stay fairly high for many, many months.

Employment has finally started to grow but the growth has definitely taken some time. The county has recently added more than 1,000 jobs to the payroll which is definitely a good sign, especially for those who have been looking for employment and finally found the job that they were looking for.

There has also been a lot of improvement when it comes to manufacturing types of jobs. There have been thousands of manufacturing jobs created within the past year. This is definitely a good sign as at one point, a lot of manufacturing jobs were lost and people were left unemployed and jobless for quite a while.

The jobless rate for the month of November was definitely an improvement from the previous month of October. In October, the unemployment rate was at about 8.8 percent. Government jobs, utility jobs, education jobs, health jobs, and various other job fields have been created which has helped decrease the jobless rate. There have been a few jobs that did take a loss, including hospitality jobs and construction jobs.

Vance-Sherman has said, “Over the past year, the number of Snohomish County residents counted as employed grew by an estimated 5,180 and the number counted as unemployed fell 6,300.”

Vance-Sherman also says that while construction jobs have decreased in the county, there has been a lot of growth with the aerospace jobs.