Is rural Washington getting left behind?

Some of Washington is doing very well.
A lot of the state, well, isn't.

Last week, federal and state agencies released official unemployment figures for May of this year. The good news that was contained in the new data received widespread positive media coverage.

But while the statewide jobless rate fell to 4.5% – nearly on par with the national average – and the Seattle metro area is better still at 3.3%, there’s some less good news that we can’t ignore.

Rural Washington still lags far behind the rest of the state and the nation in terms of joblessness. How much worse? On the map below, counties colored red are experiencing hotter employment than the nation; blue indicates they’re running colder.

It’s easy to see that most of Washington outside of the urban centers, regions where sustainable forestry operations can be working to accomplish a range of shared objectives through environmental stewardship – among them maintaining cool, clean water on 60,000 miles streams for fish habitat, as well as cleaning the air and supporting carbon reduction – are anywhere from ice blue to indigo.

The good news is that jobs in modern forestry benefit the economy and the environment. It's a formula that we should be asking more of our leaders to look closely at and say yes to.

If you want to take a closer look at the data, we invite you to use the interactive version of this map on our website that includes more specific info for each county.

Commissioner Hilary Franz is working on a rural jobs initiative

It’s clear to most that reviving Washington state’s rural economy will require a collaboration between business, state government and local communities. State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz is moving the Department of Natural Resources forward on a Rural Communities Partnership Initiative that seeks to ways to promote more family-wage jobs outside of the state's urban core. You can read more on the One Voice blog about Franz' two-day tour of rural communities including Colville, Port Angeles, and Darrington. More information is also published here on the Department of Natural Resources website.