More and more people nationwide are claiming unemployment benefits, but that trend apparently isn't happening in the Tri-Cities.
The week ending March 22 saw the number of first-time unemployment claims jump to 407,000, an increase of 38,000 from the previous week, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday. Also, the four-week average of first-time claims rose by 15,750 to 374,500.
In Washington, the number of first-time claims in the same period was 8,083. The latest four-week average through March 22 shows a
20 percent increase over the same period last year.
What the Washington numbers don't tell is that there are more people in the state labor force compared to, say the 2005 levels, said Jeff Robinson, a state economic analyst with Washington Employment Security Department.
And the number of first-time unemployment claims went down by 536 since the week ending March 1. The number of continued claims, which shows whether a worker has found a job or not, also came down from 67,027 in the week ending March 1 to 62,079 in the week ending March 22.
A similar trend is visible in the latest available data for the Tri-Cities, which excludes March.
The number of first-time claims fell from 2,137 in January to 1,230 in February in Benton-Franklin counties and the number of continued claims also fell from 3,796 in January to 3,459 in February.
That suggests the Tri-City economy is healthy, said Dean Schau, regional labor economist. In 2007, the number of first-time claims was 2,127 in January, which fell to 1,165 in February.
Even if there's a national recession, the Tri-Cities won't be affected too much, Schau said. With agriculture booming, the local food processing sector will do well, and work on Hanford's vitrification plant can be expected to generate more construction jobs as long as the federal budget remains solid, Schau said.
A weak dollar also is helping push the state's exports and contributing to a statewide growth in manufacturing, software development and agriculture.
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