Clark County’s employment rate jumped in February, rebounding from a January decline caused in part by the federal government shutdown. That’s the latest news from the Washington Employment Security Department and Southwest Washington regional economist Scott Bailey.
“The biggest change was the bounce back in federal employment,” Bailey said. “Everything else was pretty normal — and normal is pretty decent in this neck of the woods.”
Total unadjusted nonfarm employment rose by 1,300 jobs to end the month at 167,000. The biggest gain was an increase of 500 government jobs, most of which were federal jobs that had been temporarily lost in the previous month.
The shutdown began Dec. 22 and continued until Jan. 25. An estimated 800,000 federal workers were furloughed or otherwise impacted by the shutdown, including 400 in Clark County, according to Bailey.
Nongovernmental sectors saw February growth as well. Education and health services gained 300 jobs, and the construction industry and leisure and hospitality sector both gained 200 jobs.
The construction industry gains could signal the start of a normal seasonal increase in construction jobs, Bailey said, although the biggest gains usually come in April. It could also just be gains due to a busy industry — the city of Vancouver has enough projects lined up to potentially fuel gains in construction throughout the year, he said.
“It should kind of start up in especially April,” he said. “It’ll wake up from its winter doldrums.”
The only sector that posted a loss was retail trade, which declined by 100 jobs — a change that Bailey attributed to usual seasonal trends at the tail end of the holiday season.
When reporting the state-level jobs numbers, the Employment Security Department posts the actual change in jobs and a seasonally adjusted figure, which is recalculated to exclude large changes in the workforce that reliably occur at the same point in each year, such as thousands of students seeking summer jobs in June.
County-level unemployment numbers are not seasonally adjusted, but Bailey said his monthly report includes a seasonally adjusted estimate for Clark County that showed a net gain of 800 jobs for February.
The county’s unemployment rate was estimated to be 5.1 percent at the end of the month, a three-tenths of a percentage point decrease from January and a decrease of four-tenths of a percentage point from February 2018. For comparison, the Portland metro area’s unemployment rate was estimated at 3.8 percent.
Clark County’s job growth over the previous 12 months was revised substantially downward in the January labor market report, due to the addition of new tax data from the third quarter for 2018. The county’s job growth rate for the 12 months ending in February matches the rate from the January report: 2.2 percent.
Still, Clark County’s growth rate continues to outpace the averages for the state and country. The U.S. job growth rate during the same period was 1.7 percent, the state of Washington’s was 1.9 percent, the state of Oregon’s was 1.5 percent and the Portland metro area’s was 1.6 percent.
Washington’s 12-month job growth rate fell substantially from January, when it was reported at 2.5 percent. The U.S. rate also fell from January, but Bailey said that in both cases the declines were likely due not to tax adjustments, but to poor February results due to inclement weather in much of the country. The Seattle area in particular had to deal with a major winter storm.
“The U.S. got bumped down because they had such a weak month — weather probably played a part in that,” Bailey said. “We (in Clark County) mostly managed to duck that.”
