Washington State's December 2008 unemployment rate is at 7.1%

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From the Seattle Times

Wash unemployment rate jumps to 7.1 percent in Dec

Washington's unemployment rate jumped to 7.1 percent last month, the largest one month increase in more than three decades.

By RACHEL LA CORTE

Associated Press Writer

OLYMPIA, Wash. —

Washington's unemployment rate jumped to 7.1 percent last month, the largest one month increase in more than three decades.

The jump of more than half a percentage point from 6.4 percent in November was the biggest increase reported since 1976, the state Employment Security Department said Wednesday.

The highest unemployment rate on record in Washington was in November 1982, at 12.2 percent. The lowest was 4.4 percent reported in March and April of 2007.

Washington state's unemployment rate has nearly caught up to the national rate of 7.2 percent.

Last year at this time, the state's unemployment rate was 4.6 percent. Washington had 54,600 fewer jobs last month than a year ago, a 1.8 percent decrease. Nationally, employment declined by 1.9 percent over the past year.

"In barely a year, we've gone from historically low unemployment to record numbers of people applying for unemployment benefits," Employment Security Commissioner Karen Lee said in a prepared statement.

She noted that a record-setting 90,331 new unemployment applications were filed in December.

Lee said the department has doubled the number of staff answering phones at its call centers and has increased the capacity of its phone system to deal with the increase in unemployment insurance applications.

Economists say nearly 252,000 people are unemployed and looking for work.