Washington State Cuts 1000+ Jobs

Some serious job cuts are coming to state of Washington this week. The state is getting ready to get rid of a serious number of workers, more than a thousand as part of a cost savings measure. The cuts, which are expected to impact about 1,266 full time employees in the state of Washington has already been approved by the state legislature

The budget was done in a fairly unique way. Instead of deciding what positions they needed to cut the state took a different approach and decided to look at each position and decide what they could afford to keep. This approach left almost no positions as sacred and while it is resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs, it is also results in the addition of jobs to three different areas. The child-support collection offices will be getting eight new workers, the department of health will get 28 more workers and the states Attorney General’s Office will gain 12 jobs.

As for the cuts they are a bit of a mixed bag. A great number of the cuts will come from a change in liquor sales and distribution laws in the state. The system was recently allowed to go private. Because of this the majority of the jobs will be let go here. Other large scale cuts will come from the Department of Social and Health Services, as they are expected to lose about 440 full time workers in the current round of cuts.

While the state was quick to point out that a fair number of the job cuts will be coming via attrition, not filing slots left by employees who have retired, been fired, or quit their jobs, they will not put in numbers how many of the jobs will be attrition and how many will actually put a current worker out of a job and back onto the market.
Of course, these are not the first job cuts in the state of Washington. Some of you may recall our earlier coverage of job cuts to the University of Washington. For those of you who missed out here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all:

“The town of Pullman, Washington is like a lot of other university towns. It is a center for local culture, it has an active nightlife and the areas local economy can be profoundly influenced by the budget of the college that surrounds it. For those of you who are not from the area, Pullman is the town that is intimately linked to Washington State University. The two are so close that the schools mascot (a cougar) adorns the city’s bridge on each end, and the signs that show you the town limits also do double duty as signs for the school.

It should be no surprise that the college is the largest single employer in the town. As the state is cutting its budget in order to remain solvent the university will not be getting as much funding as they have in prior years. In order to cope with this loss the University of Washington is cutting down on its budget and those changes are already showing an impact on the economy, making local business owners nervous.”