Seattle Unemployment Falls While Real Estate Booms

Seattle’s unemployment rate reached 3.9 percent this past September—the lowest rate in five years. In 2011, the city’s jobless rate hovered around 8 percent. The drop in unemployment is due to many factors, not the least of which is Seattle’s booming tech economy.

According to GeekWire, Amazon, Expedia, Facebook, Zillow and Salesforce have each begun expanding their workforce in the region. In fact, Amazon has over 11,000 positions open in the Seattle metro area alone. In total, the information and tech sector have added 6,400 jobs in the state of Washington between Sept. 2015 and Sept 2016, and “software publishers” added around half of that figure.

This is good news for MBAs grads in Seattle. Tech companies lead the way in recruiting efforts for MBA grads, and there’s no shortage in the city. In 2015, Amazon hired the most MBAs of any employer in the tech industry, hiring 110 individuals from elite US business schools compared to 47 hires for Microsoft—its closest competitor.

Paul Turek, the state’s labor market economist said, “We’re seeing growth in the labor force while trimming unemployment as employers continue to pull people back off the sidelines and into the job market.”

As for living in the city, Seattle is one of the nation’s hottest home markets. Compared to a year ago, local house prices are growing more than twice as fast as the national rate (11.4 percent compared to 5.3 percent). In fact, Seattle is second only to Portland and followed closely by Denver.

Home prices in Seattle have been surging for more than four years, in large part due to the limited inventory on the market. While people continue to move to Seattle, there are fewer and fewer houses available. And it doesn’t matter if you’re looking for an affordable or luxury home, the price levels are more expensive all around.

Although the real estate market isn’t good news for home buyers, it is good news for sellers who can put a “fixer-upper” on the market and still find a buyer. According to the Seattle Times, the median house cost in King County was $538,000, $395,000 in Snohomish County and $279,000 in Pierce County.

regions: Seattle

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