Clark County added 600 temporary jobs in May, barely nudging its jobless rate down to 13 percent from a revised 13.1 percent in April, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Employment Security Department.
Most of the temporary jobs, about 500, came as a result of the federal government hiring workers for the 2010 Census, said Scott Bailey, Southwest Washington regional economist. Clark County’s private sector, meanwhile, remained anemic: While the county added 100 electronics jobs in May, other sectors either shed jobs, remained flat or reflected a seasonal hiring trend.
“The big picture, like (Washington) state and the nation, is that we added jobs but they’re temporary government jobs,” Bailey said. “We’ve hit bottom, and we’re bouncing along, but we’re not making any progress at this point in terms of the labor market.”
May’s jobless rate was actually up from 12.3 percent in May 2009.
One bright spot: Residents filed 1,962 new unemployment claims in May, well below the 2,945 initial claims filed in May 2009, and closer to pre-recession levels.
Statewide, unemployment fell by 0.2 percentage points to 9.1 percent in May, the lowest level since the same month a year ago. The state’s economy generated an estimated 8,600 new jobs in May. However, as in Clark County, temporary Census jobs provided the lion’s share of that job growth.
David Wallace, acting chief economist for the Employment Security Department, said the private sector job growth was disappointing statewide. “It’s adding 200 jobs,” he said. “You’re treading water. At this stage, we certainly would have liked to see more growth than that.”
Wallace said it’s hard to say why the private sector in Washington state appears to be flat-footed. Concerns about a European debt crisis may be prompting companies to horde private capital. “My gut feeling is that people are still sitting on the fences,” Wallace said. “It’s a mixed or neutral job picture. We’d like it to be better than that.”
In Clark County, the overall job market in May was “essentially flat,” Bailey said. For example, construction added 100 jobs in May, but that reflected only seasonal trends. In the first four months of this year, builders filed permits for 419 housing units in Clark County, “better than the 162 for the same period in 2009,” said Bailey, “but below the 2008 pace and only a third of the average from the 1997-2007 span.”
One bright spot was in electronics manufacturing, which added 100 jobs in May. “Revised data show that electronics has expanded by 200 jobs in the past three months,” according to Bailey. Total factory employment climbed to 11,800 jobs, which is equal to the year-ago figure but 2,100 jobs short of when the recession began. Bailey said Clark County’s electronics manufacturing sector has benefited from a global recovery in electronics that has been driven by low inventories and better sales for technology firms.
