In a strong showing thats contrary to other published numbers, Spokane County employers had an average of 4,200 more people on the job last year than they did in 1997.


Employers here kept an average of 188,900 people at work in 1998, up from 184,700 workers in 1997, new state figures show.


The higher number is a tremendous increase in jobs, says Phil Kuharski, a retired Spokane securities executive who has tracked the economy here for years. Mark Turner, president of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council, describes the increase as not bad at all.


The jump is the biggest in at least five years, but theres more to the story.


The increase showed up in a draft version of a state survey in which employers report the number of workers on their payrolls who are covered by industrial insurance. Yet, while the jump is welcome, its surprising in that a different survey had been showing a downturn in employment here in each of the last seven months of 1998.


That separate survey, in which residents are contacted at random and asked whether they have jobs, had reported a falloff in employment each month from June through December last year compared with the year-earlier month. That supposed downturn came after 72 straight monthssince September 1991, right after the Gulf Warin which more residents reported they had jobs than in the year-earlier month.


The resident survey is controversial, however, because the numbers it produces are adjusted based on additional data besides the survey resultsand are estimates rather than counts.


I dont think theres anybody who can tell you how accurate those numbers are, says Larry Harris, a research analyst in Olympia with the Washington state Employment Security Department.


Avista Corp. senior business analyst Randy Barcus calls the so-called household survey numbers hyperbolic. Fred Walsh, the states labor market analyst for the Spokane area, says the household survey is so inexact its unreliable. Walsh, who compiles the figures in the other surveythe one of employers thats conducted to learn the number of workers covered by unemployment insurancesays that survey showed Spokane-area employers had more workers on their payrolls each month of 1998 than they did in the year-earlier month.


Walshs survey, commonly called the employer survey, is believed to be far more reliable than the household survey. Both Walsh and Harris say the random sample of residents contacted here for the household survey is too small to produce statistically reliable results.


Also, the two surveys measure different things and thus arent directly comparable. For instance, the survey of employers doesnt account for jobs held by Spokane County residents who work outside of the county, and the survey of residents doesnt account for jobs held here by people who work in Spokane County but live outside the county.


Kuharski says the two surveys at times have shown diverse results. In 1994, the last year of a big migration of people into Spokane, the employer survey showed a gain of 7,100 jobsthe most since 1978while the household survey showed an increase of only 5,500 jobs. Kuharski speculates that those two contrasting figures, when viewed during an in-migration, could have shown very possibly a large number of people who couldnt find housing in Spokane after getting jobs here. The next year, the two numbers were reversed, with the household survey showing a very strong increase of 6,100 more residents saying they held jobs, while the employer survey reflected a much more normal increase of 3,700 jobs. Those two numbers could have meant that many people who had gotten jobs here in 1994 found housing in the county in 1995.


Kuharski points to one other interesting possibility. He says that for 1998, data from Kootenai County show the opposite of the Spokane County results: The Kootenai County household survey reflects a much greater increase in jobs than the employer survey does. Those results could mean more residents from nearby counties such as Kootenai are taking jobs here, Kuharski says.


It may be that were getting more and more commuters, he says. Something is going on there in my opinion. Still, its too early to reach solid conclusions, he says.


While no one can say how accurate the household-survey numbers are, theyre closely watched because theyre some of the first numbers available on jobsand theyre used to derive estimates of unemployment.


Kuharski says the household survey here has been showing that unemployment has been on the rise. That was true again with the most recent figures, released last week. Those numbers estimate that 1,900 more Spokane-area residents were unemployed in December 1998 than in the year-earlier month, and that the unemployment rate had risen to 5.3 percent from 4.5 percent in December 1997. In the same report, household-survey numbers for January 1999, which are still preliminary, estimate that unemployment had climbed by 2,500 since the year-earlier month. They pegged the unemployment rate in January at 6.5 percent, up from 5.4 percent in January 1998.


At least, however, the preliminary household-survey numbers for January showed an increase in jobswith 2,000 more people employedfor the first month-over-month increase since May 1998.


Walsh, the state labor analyst, sees an iffy 99, more of a downer, but points out that for years, the employer survey has shown that weve been growing gradually.


The strike at Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. has sidelined 2,100 workers here since Oct. 1, and employment in the high-tech sector here has been diminished by cutbacks last year at Key Tronic Corp., Wang Global, and Johnson Matthey Electronics, Walsh says.


Interestingly, the same kind of household survey thats done here is done on the state and national level, although the samples in those surveys are large enough to give the results accepted statistical margins of accuracy.


The (U.S.) Bureau of Labor Statistics will give us an error rate for the nation and the state, says Harris. While it would be possible to contact enough people to make the Spokane-area survey, and other metropolitan-area surveys, statistically accurate, that would cost a lot, he adds.