Good news: Workers making more as economy bounces back

Wages went up in Washington state last year,according to the state Employment Security Department.

The average wage grew 3.6 percent as our state, and the nation, recovered from the global economic collapse.

This good news comes on the heels of a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report putting Washington in the Top 10 states for creating jobs, with that report stating, “Led by the software industry, Washington is one of the few states with a growing information sector. Washington moved up five places into the top 10 largely due to its rapid short-term job growth over the past two years. The state’s manufacturing sector – led by aircraft and other transportation equipment building – significantly outperformed the national manufacturing industry since 2001. The Evergreen State added another 65,000 jobs in professional, scientific and technical services; 19,000 in securities and commodity contracts and 12,000 in electronic wholesale markets.”

The average wage grew from $48,162 in 2010 to $49,894 in 2011, according to Employment Security. The total number of workers covered by unemployment insurance increased by 37,764 last year while total earnings by workers got boosted by $6.6 billion.

From the release by Employment Security:

“Month to month,we’ve been seeing strong growth in industries that tend to offer above-average pay, and that seems to be reflected in last year’s earnings,” said Employment Security Commissioner Paul Trause.

The three industries with the highest wage growth in 2011 were the information sector,with wage growth of 9.5 percent; company management, up 7.9 percent; and manufacturing, up 5 percent.

The 2011 numbers stood in sharp contrast to 2010, when the 2.1 percent rise in the average annual wage was caused mostly by the loss of low-paying jobs. The number of insured workers declined by nearly 32,000 that year, and wages grew by just $1.2 billion.

To read this story in Spanish, click here.

STEM education is key to growing Washington’s economy

Two new jobs reports show that Washington’s economic recovery is accelerating and that lawmakers are smart to invest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.

One new report, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows Seattle had the eighth best job growth among the top 100 metro areas in the nation over the past 12 months – posting a healthy gain of 39,100 jobs.

More good news comes from the Forbes/Praxis Strategy Group study and the Puget Sound Business Journal (PSBJ). They’re reporting that Seattle not only led the nation in high-tech and STEM job growth over the past decade, the Emerald City is still reaping the benefits of strong growth in high-tech and STEM jobs.

The Forbes study reported in the PSBJ shows that Seattle beat out rivals such as Silicon Valley to become the best city in the nation for high-tech jobs over the past decade, with a whopping 43 percent increase in high-tech employment and an 18 percent increase in STEM jobs. The study also showed Seattle’s leadership in high-tech jobs has held firm during the past couple of years. In fact, the study says, “the Seattle metro area has posted 12% tech job growth over the past two years and 7.6% STEM growth, handily beating the performance of Silicon Valley.”

And the good news in high-tech employment continues. The PSBJ points out “Forbes' findings seem to be backed up by recent announcements that Amazon is hiring 1,000 new tech workers in Seattle and that other big tech companies, such as Facebook and Google, are expanding offices in the area.”

These numbers show we’re on the right path, but we can’t let up on the gas pedal just yet. Lawmakers like Rep. Marcie Maxwell (D-Renton) continue to push for additional investments in STEM education. In the December special session, Rep. Maxwell sponsored bills that created competitive STEM grant programs and added STEM knowledge to the Professional Educators Standards Board certification process. Both bills received bi-partisan support before being signed into law.

To read this story in Spanish, please click here.

Boeing employment on the rise

We’ve known for years that no region builds airplanes better than Washington state, and recent employment figures from Boeing seem to reflect that fact.

 The number of Washingtonians on Boeing’s payroll is the highest it has been in over a decade. At the end of February, the company reported employing 82,325 workers across the state and has added nearly 9,000 workers since the end of 2010 alone.

The increased employment is largely due to the growing demand. Boeing plans to increase airline production at both the Renton and Everett plants. In addition to manufacturing jobs, development of new airliners, like the 737 Max, has led the company to hire more folks in the engineering field.

House Democrats have long-championed new investments, funding and reforms to foster growth and create jobs in the aerospace industry. The results of this public-private partnership include:

• Workforce development scholarships and grants worth millions to train aerospace workers
• New educational state facilities providing new resources to manufacturers and workers 
• Aerospace training programs through state community and technical colleges 
• Streamlined permitting processes for Boeing and its aerospace manufacturing partners 
• Reforms at L&I and ESD, which reduced premium rates for workers’ comp and unemployment insurance

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

Get paid for helping injured workers keep their jobs

Good things come to those who keep injured workers on the job under the new Stay at Work program launched this week.

If you’re an employer and you keep injured workers doing safe, light-duties until they fully recover and can go back to their regular activities, you may be entitled to a partial reimbursement from the state Department of Labor & Industries.

The Stay at Work program was part of the Workers’ Compensation System legislation sponsored by Rep. Tami Green and passed by the Legislature last year.

“This is a win-win for both workers and employers,” said Green. “Workers recover more quickly and are less affected by lost wages. Employers save on worker’s comp premiums and the expense of hiring someone to backfill the injured worker.”

In addition to the Stay at Work program, these other reforms in the Workers’ Comp package aimed at reducing costs for employers and improving workers’ health will be launched by L&I this year: a Workers’ Compensation Provider Network, expansion of the successful Centers for Occupational Health and Education (COHE), and Structured Settlement Agreements.

Read the L&I press release here.

To read this story in Spanish, click here.

House members meet with aerospace employers in Everett

On the day following the delivery of the first 787 Dreamliner, members of the House Labor & Workforce Development Committee held a work session just outside the main gates of the Boeing facility in Everett to address the stagnant labor market and discuss strategies for providing manufacturing jobs, and the skilled workers, needed to climb out of economic doldrums.

The committee met at the Everett Community College Corporate & Continuing Education Center, where an overview of the employment landscape was provided by the state Employment Security Department. Next, the committee heard from aerospace employers who emphasized the importance of motivating the next generation of aerospace workers, and shared ways they actively promote their industry amongst students still in high school. Replenishing the engineering workforce is a must, as the average age of their current workforce is 58 years old and nearing retirement.

Aerospace training providers from state colleges, apprenticeship programs and private facilities around the state explained their capacity problem - forced to turn away interested students due to lacking state support and partnerships to expand their programs.        

It's an uphill battle in many ways, and one that lacks an Apollo Program or some similar landmark that fueled the dreams and aspirations of the retiring workforce.

"Collaborations between Washington's employers and our state government will be key in providing these career pathways and skilled workers," said Rep. Chris Reykdal. "The grants, facilities, and curricula the state is providing -and hopefully expand further in the future - will make sure our good-paying jobs are filled by our state's students."

The work session ended with a tour of the Everett assembly lines by the attending Boeing staff; a sight that shows in dramatic fashion the sheer magnitude of our state's resources, challenges, and opportunities.

To read this blog post in Spanish, please go here.

Saving lives. Period.

Here at the capital, it’s sometimes difficult to see or quantify the impact a certain bill will have once it’s signed into law.

Not so with one signed into law this past Friday. This one will save lives. Period.

The problem: Each year, hundreds of workplace hazards across the state are left uncorrected, exposing many workers to potential dangers while a business owner appeals a citation issued by the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I). Abatement of serious violations is automatically put on hold the moment an employer appeals. Some remain uncorrected for months or years. This loophole had left workers vulnerable to serious harm or even death.

In Washington, about 10 percent of all citations are appealed annually, and while most businesses correct hazards during an appeals process, many do not.

Senate Bill 5068, says when a business is cited for a serious or willful violation that could result in serious injury or death, they still have the right to appeal the ruling, but they must fix it. Period.

Rep. Chris Reykdal sponsored the House version of the bill and worked closely with House members Tami Green and Mike Sells, as well as stakeholders and L&I experts, to protect workers and make sure workplace hazards aren’t neglected.

Joining the lawmakers were steelworkers from the Tesoro refinery, making the trip down to Olympia to celebrate the bill’s passage. The refinery was the scene of a tragic explosion last April, which resulted in the death of seven workers.

L&I’s investigation revealed that Tesoro, despite warnings, “disregarded a host of workplace safety regulations, continued to operate failing equipment for years, postponed maintenance, inadequately tested for potentially catastrophic damage and failed to adequately protect their workers from significant risk of injury and death.”

The agency cited the company for 39 willful violations. A willful violation is a category of violation where an employer knowingly violates a rule and is plainly indifferent to correcting it, while a serious violation is one involving an instance where there is a substantial probability of serious injury or death.

While no one can say for sure whether those deaths would have been prevented, this new law certainly means lives will be saved in the future. Period.

More information about L&I’s implementation of SB 5068 can be found here.

"Skills are the source of Seattle’s strength."

Here’s an interesting and encouraging NY Times article written by a Harvard economics professor about Seattle, its resiliency throughout economic downturns, and exceeding national growth trends, due in part to concentrating smart people in a dense city.

Here’s an excerpt:

As Boeing scaled back its Seattle employment, the city floundered. By 1971, a much-discussed billboard read “Would the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?”

But there was a crucial difference between Seattle and Detroit. Unlike Ford and General Motors, Boeing employed highly educated workers. Almost since its inception, Seattle has been committed to education and has benefited from the University of Washington, which is based there. Skills are the source of Seattle’s strength.

Over the last three decades, human capital has become increasingly linked with urban growth outside the Sun Belt.
The ability to attract skilled people was intimately tied to the success of Seattle’s star companies, such as Amazon; Nordstrom’s, whose strategy of empowering employees was more feasible because those workers were skilled; Starbucks, a coffee chain founded by educators; and Microsoft, which depends on a steady supply of smart software engineers. (Disclosure: I serve on the domestic advisory board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.)

A great paradox of our age is that despite the declining cost of connecting across space, more people are clustering together in cities. The explanation of that strange fact is that globalization and technological change have increased the returns on being smart, and humans get smart by being around other smart people.

Dense, smart cities like Seattle succeed by attracting smart people who educate and employ one another.