Here’s some good news for hump day. Washington’s jobless rate fell to 8.7 percent in November as employers in the state added 12,100 jobs, the biggest one-month gain in four years.
“This is the kind of job growth we need to make a good dent in the unemployment rate,” said Greg Weeks, director of the Employment Security Department’s labor-market information office. “The drop in the unemployment rate was unusually large for November, and I expect it to be revised to a somewhat smaller decline when we get more data.”
Nearly every industry sector posted job gains last month, but the tech-heavy information category didn’t fuel the boom as one might expect. According to the report, just 100 jobs were added in the information category.
The biggest category gainers were professional and business services, which added 4,200 jobs; leisure & hospitality, which added 3,800 jobs; construction, which added 2,000 jobs; and transportation, warehousing & utilities, which added 1,200 jobs.
Altogether, employment in Washington state has increased by an estimated 44,600 since November 2010.
Here’s the full report.
