New WA unemployment numbers show which counties and industries saw job losses
Washington state’s unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1% in February, representing the fourth consecutive monthly increase, according to new state data.
That’s up from a 4.4% unemployment rate in February 2025.
The steadily rising unemployment rate indicates a potential labor-force shift, Anneliese Vance-Sherman, chief labor economist with the Employment Security Department (ESD), told McClatchy on Tuesday.
Her biggest takeaway: “We are absolutely in a moment of transition,” she said.
“We’re seeing the unemployment rate increase, we’re seeing workers more likely to hang onto their jobs; a little bit less turnover than we saw when the labor market was really favorable for job seekers,” she said.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate nationally hiked slightly from January to February, from 4.3% to 4.4%, according to ESD. In February 2025, the national rate was 4.2%.
County-level unemployment data
ESD released county-specific unemployment numbers on Tuesday.
In February 2026, Pierce County’s unemployment rate was 6.1% — a marked bump compared with the previous February’s 4.7%, according to ESD data.
In addition to that unemployment-rate spike, the county saw a modest rise in the labor force, Vance-Sherman said. Increases happened in employment sectors including transportation, warehousing and utilities, as well as private education and health services.
Decreases have come mostly in the government sector, largely attributed to federal-government employment losses, Vance-Sherman said. She noted that although Pierce County is home to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, those numbers don’t include sensitive data on military employment due to security concerns. Thus, such job losses would likely be tied to the military in some way, but not explicitly military jobs.
Retail trade and manufacturing are also down in Pierce County, she said.
The unemployment-rate numbers for Thurston County are 5% in February and 5.2% in February last year, per ESD. In Whatcom County the rate was 5.1% in February 2026 and 5.2% in February 2025.
Other trends that stood out to Vance-Sherman: Olympia saw deep job losses in the public sector — namely in state government. Bellingham, meanwhile, witnessed a substantial increase in the manufacturing realm plus a drop in state government, with Vance-Sherman noting that area is home to multiple higher-education institutions.
For Benton and Franklin counties, the February unemployment rates were 5.7% and 6.7%, respectively, ESD data shows. Those rates the prior February were 5.9% and 7%.
Vance-Sherman said the Tri-Cities saw a labor-force increase of 5,254 people. Such growth was concentrated in professional business services, government, and private education and health services.
Meanwhile, the Tri-Cities experienced drops in manufacturing and leisure and hospitality, she said.
“Overall, just looking at these numbers, it looks like Tri-Cities is doing fairly well,” she said. Though the unemployment rate is higher than it is statewide, she pointed out that it also hasn’t changed much.
WA state unemployment rate
Vance-Sherman said the state has hovered around a mid-4% unemployment rate since 2023 — but that that rate has increased bit by bit in the past year. It went from 4.9% in December to 5% in January before hitting 5.1% in February.
“It’s really been this incremental and consistent increase in the unemployment rate,” she said. “Usually, we consider around 5% to be kind of a normal unemployment rate, and what this really kind of signals is we’ve had these very low unemployment rates for a long period of time.”
Washington’s private-sector gains over the year were mostly seen in health services and education, business and professional services, and transportation, utilities and warehousing, according to ESD. Retail trade, manufacturing and financial activities witnessed the largest one-year sector losses.
Throughout 2025, employment growth stalled, Vance-Sherman said in a recent news release, with the number of jobs rising by 14,300 on net from February 2025 to February 2026. While employment in the private sector climbed by 20,900 jobs during that time, government employment dropped by 6,600.
“Despite three consecutive months of growth, employment remains only 0.4% above the level observed last February,” she said in the April 15 release.
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