Business
Retail Rebound: What’s Selling, What’s Not in the New Economy
Given the shutdown of the economy, you might expect that retail sales would be significantly down from the first half of 2020. They're not.
Elsewhere
Why Everyone’s Moving To Ellensburg
The new state population estimates show Kittitas County growing 3.4 percent last year, and 7.6 percent over the last three years, both figures tops in the state.
Business
The Economy’s Nike Swoosh Recovery
We see sharp drops in all activities and a comparatively large drop in employment. Things bottom out late March to mid-April and begin a steady climb back toward their March 1 level.
Cities
Indexer: Empty Roads Coming To An End? Yes, But Slowly
All kinds of trips have increased since the low points of late March and early April. As people have returned to work, transit use has increased. At the same time, the residential line has fallen by more than half, as people gradually emerge from their self-isolation.
Indexer
Quantifying Our California Connection
The Seattle-California connection established in 1852 continues as strong as ever. In some ways Seattle is fated to be the eternal little sibling to the Bay Area and the Los Angeles area: smaller, less glamorous, frequently ignored, sometimes disdainful, sometimes envious.
Cities
We’re Number 29!
Seattle had the fastest growth for a central city from 2010 to 2020. But at the same time, the balance of the Seattle metro area ranked only ninth for growth.
Cities
Risk Versus Benefit: The Threat To Urbanism
Urbanism is about choices, not inevitability, and the context of those choices has changed radically. Re-engineering cities to make them vibrant, productive and safe, in the face of a dominant atmosphere of fear, will not be easy.
Business
You’re Unemployed and You’re Unemployed and You’re Employed… Here’s how it Breaks Down
Quietly, tens of thousands of office workers, salespeople and their managers have been let go. A restaurant or construction supply company can't do much business with all the restaurants and sites shut down. We look at unemployment claims by occupation.
Business
It Won’t Be Your Grandfather’s Boeing Bust
The inevitable Boeing reductions will hurt the regional economy, but not nearly as much as past Boeing job cuts. Boeing is still the region’s biggest employer, but accounts for a gradually diminishing share of all jobs.
Business
Data On Local Unemployment: Dip Before Deluge?
Even with this new, detailed data on unemployment claims, we really do not know how many people are unemployed in the traditional sense. Epidemiologists are not the only ones laboring under a lack of good data.
