Career Advice & News Center

The nation has faced a high unemployment rate ever since the start of the recession in September 2008. Since then, millions of Americans have become unemployed and immense pressure has been put on the federal government to create jobs. While some states such as Michigan and California have fared much worse than others in terms of the jobless rate, there is still a need for more jobs overall.

Washington state saw the first increase in job creation since November 2008, according to BusinessWeek. Although there is still a lot of work to be done in order to bring the jobless rate down from 9.3 percent, state officials are hopeful that this could be a positive sign of better things to come.

"It's encouraging to see jobs finally coming back," employment security commissioner, Karen Lee, said in a statement. "I hope it signals the beginning of a job-full recovery, not a job-less recovery."

An estimated 12,400 jobs were added during the month of January, with about one-fourth of positions emerging in retail, followed closely behind with 2,800 new workers in education and health services and 2,700 job gains in construction. The change between December and January has many people hopeful.

"The month-over-month news is pretty encouraging for a change," David Wallace, the state's chief economist, told The News Tribune.


While this is encouraging news, there were still 360,000 individuals who were looking for work in January, and 305,000 people were still collecting unemployment benefits.

This may be a good sign for workers in the state of Washington, but the national job market still is trying to find its footing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, with approximately 14.8 million Americans out of work.