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where we give you a shortcut to understanding the latest news and cultural moments and how they affect us here in the Puget Sound region.

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Good afternoon from the KUOW Newsroom.

This is Seattle now.

I'm Paige Browning with a roundup of today's top stories.

It's Thursday, April 2nd.

Starting with some bummer economic news,

unemployment in Washington hit 5% in January,

its highest rate since 2021.

That's according to the latest data from the state's employment security department.

Monica Nicholsberg has more.

Washington's unemployment was higher than the national rate of 4.3% in January.

The year also started with mass layoffs across Washington's tech industry.

Those layoffs have continued at a slower trickle, most recently from Oracle and META.

But state economist Annalise Fance Sherman said tech isn't driving rising unemployment.

That's because the industry continues to grow in some strategic areas, even as it cuts jobs.

These are sectors that have kind of gone from extremely high growth to a period of overall decreasing employment and more or less was flattened out since then, so I would classify them as very little growth.

Job losses in the state last year were driven by manufacturing, retail, and business services, while education

and health care saw job gains. Monica Nicholsberg, KUOW News.

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