• Previously:
Clark County’s revised unemployment rate was 14.3 percent in February.
• What’s new:
It increased to an unadjusted 14.8 percent in March, even as some jobs were added.
• What’s next:
Regional economist Scott Bailey expects manufacturing employment to continue to grow over coming months.
In January, when Washington saw its first large monthly job gain since November 2008, state employment economist Dave Wallace thought it could be a fluke.
But with the addition of 1,600 jobs in March, announced Tuesday by the Washington Employment Security Department, Wallace says the uptick is now a trend.
March marked the second month the state increased its payroll in the past three months, even as the unemployment rate inched up 0.1 of a percentage point over the previous month to 9.5 percent.
“If you stand back and look at the trend, after three months we can start drawing stronger conclusions,” Wallace said. “Who knows, maybe it’ll be more of a three-month fluke, but it looks more like a trend.”
Clark County, however, continued to lag behind the state with a seasonally-adjusted loss of 200 jobs in March. The county’s unemployment rate ticked up half a percentage point to reach an unadjusted 14.8 percent from a revised 14.3 percent in February, according to Scott Bailey, Southwest Washington regional economist with the Employment Security Department.
Still, the addition of 100 permanent jobs in electronics manufacturing, versus the temporary hiring the sector has seen as production has ramped up in recent months, provided some local optimism. And Bailey expects manufacturing in general to continue to improve in coming months, reflecting a national rise in production.
“It’s not like we’re crashing; we’re evening out,” Bailey said.
Other sectors, including construction, retail and hospitality, also managed small payroll boosts, adding 100 jobs each, in line with seasonal expectations, according to Bailey.
On the flip side, information services and professional and business services both lost 100 jobs. Overall, employment in the county was down 2,800 jobs in March from the same month in 2010.
Statewide, consumers are spending more, which led to growth in the retail and hospitality sectors totaling 1,000 additional jobs in March. Companies are also hiring more temporary workers, contributing to a gain of 1,500 jobs in professional services, Wallace said.
“It was a small change both in terms of employment and unemployment but it feels OK because the growth is widespread; it wasn’t just one sector,” Wallace said. “It does feel like a trend is developing at least for the first three months of the year.”
Clark County employment is still more closely tied to the Portland metro area, however, than to the rest of Washington state, Bailey said. Employment data for Portland, set to be released in about two weeks, will give county residents a better measure of overall progress here than the statewide numbers.
