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Mass High Tech
Unemployment holds steady
The Washington state unemployment rate continues to hover above nine percent, a sign that it may be tough to recover some of the jobs that have been lost over the past 12 months. The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for November stood at 9.2 percent, down slightly from 9.3 percent in October. That was just below the U.S. unemployment rate of 10 percent.
Despite the small decline, there were still 125,600 fewer jobs in the state this November compared to last November, according to a report out today from the state's Employment Security department.
The information category -- where a number of high-tech jobs are classified -- saw a decline of about 800 jobs. Approximately 101,900 people were employed in the category last month, which compared to 102,700 for October.
A number of high-profile Seattle area tech companies cut staff at the beginning of last month, including Microsoft, RealNetworks and Classmates.com. (See related story: "Ongoing Seattle tech job cuts come despite signs of a turnaround.")
Since November of last year, there has been a five percent decline in the number of workers in the information category, according to the state numbers. Construction, manufacturing and the services categories have taken a much harder hit, with each of those categories showing double digit declines of more than 25 percent.
John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow on Twitter @johnhcook.
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