How Has The Pandemic Affected County Jobs?
Posted December 8, 2020 at 5:00 am by Hayley Day
Contributed Photo/Clem Onojeghuo.
By Minnie Knych, NW Workforce Career Center
In San Juan County, by far most businesses are seasonal and thrive during the summer but start to lay off employees in the fall.
With the COVID-19 shutdown, the summer season has been difficult for the tourism industry everywhere, but especially here in San Juan County.
Since March, our hospitality sector businesses in the San Juan Islands have struggled to stay in business with little relief. Several of our businesses will not be able to re-open when Washington state moves to the next phase of the virus shutdown.
Over the year, there was a net employment loss, with all sectors of our economy reporting 12-month losses.
The largest one-year losses were in leisure and hospitality where San Juan County had 1,560 fewer jobs overall. Government jobs remained relatively static for the year with only a 3 percent decline from September 2019 to September 2020.
Comparing September 2019 to September 2020, the number of people employed declined over the year by 28 percent. As expected, leisure and hospitality industries were the worst hit and show a loss of 1,210 jobs in 2020. That is a 67.2 percent decline for the year.
In this county, there are jobs available in the trade, transportation and utilities as well as manufacturing and construction sectors.
For those who are unemployed, maybe it is time to seek training in a new field.
Call 360-378-4662 or contact [email protected] for more information about how you can discover career opportunities and workplace skills options.
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Categories: Business, Education, Government
One comment:
One comment...
Bless you Minnie for reminding this community of opportunities, and your long time positive spirit and knowledge has, and will continue to help many many people. So glad you are still there, Pam Fry
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