Overall job growth in Spokane County is expected to remain slow into early next year, regional economists say.

A few sectors, however, show promise, they say, with a rising number of newly employed in some higher-paying technical, professional, and scientific positions.

About 208,100 people held nonagricultural wage and salary jobs in the Spokane area in May, up by 1,600 jobs from the May 2011 level, preliminary state figures show. Meanwhile, preliminary results from another state survey reported Spokane County's unemployment rate here at 9.1 percent during May, unchanged from the year-earlier month.

"I think unfortunately we're heading into another soft patch," says Grant Forsyth, Avista Corp. chief economist who produces economic forecasts for Avista's three-state service territory. "Employment growth will probably not be that strong going into the first half of 2013."

The Spokane area has experienced a high unemployment rate, mostly above 9 percent, since 2009, says Doug Tweedy, Spokane-based regional economist for the Washington state Employment Security Department.

However, Tweedy adds that recent figures also include more candidates jumping back into job searches, and more people moving to the region.

"We have more people looking," Tweedy says. "We have people who have moved here, and in 2012, as we start to recover, more people are re-entering the workforce because of better opportunity. That's the real reason that unemployment has increased."

Looking ahead, Spokane County's unemployment rate is expected to remain near 8.5 percent to 9 percent through 2012, Tweedy adds, "but again, part of the unemployment calculation is the number of people looking for work, and we expect more people to do that as the job picture improves."

Tweedy says he does expect that job picture to improve in 2013. "We have a good base of industries that are recovering now," he says. "'I think as their markets improve, then employment will also improve with them."

Forsyth says part of the equation is how the employment recovery since the Great Recession has differed from job recoveries experienced following prior recessions. This time, many employers laid off a number of workers and then found ways to reorganize and increase productivity, he adds.

"That's really applying to the regional economy and to some extent the nation," Forsyth says. "In this particular expansion, employment growth has been lagging, especially regionally, even more than it is has in the past because a lot of firms went through a lot of restructuring, and they had a lot of productivity gains."

Those productivity gains combined with modest growth in demand for products and services have generally caused many employers to rely on their existing workforces, Forsyth says.

He adds, "Really since the end of 2009, there hasn't been that much employment growth regionally, and if we think more broadly in the three states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, most of the jobs gained have been in the larger metropolitan areas such as Boise, Seattle, and Portland."

Now, both the U.S. and global economy are experiencing a slowdown that probably started toward the end of the first quarter, he says.

Growth in U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)—the output of goods and services produced by labor—was at a lower rate of 1.9 percent in the first quarter than what was anticipated, he adds, and now there is a resurgence of the European financial crises and a slowing of China's economy.

"I'm not talking about a recession, but there's strong evidence that growth is slowing from the first quarter," he says. "Probably, we're not going to have very robust growth the rest of the year, and that's particularly the case with employment, and probably for the first half of 2013."

However, regarding jobs that were added statewide, Forsyth says some gains have occurred in more technical fields—computer programming, software development, health care, and manufacturing—that require increasingly higher skill levels.

Tweedy says he sees some bright spots specific to Spokane County in four job categories: manufacturing, finance and insurance, health care, and a category he refers to as professional, scientific, and technical. The latter is drawing attention because of fast job growth that includes positions in research, engineering, legal, accounting, and computer analysis.

In 2010, he says, Spokane County had slightly more than 8,100 jobs under the category of professional, scientific, and technical. That number grew to 8,800 in 2011, and through May of this year, it jumped to 9,270.

"We see that category has increased more than any category," he adds. "Percentage wise, people actually are getting jobs. It's not as big a category as others, but it's the fastest growing."

He says optimism also is fueled by anticipation for such jobs to increase after construction is completed in fall 2013 on the Washington State University Biomedical and Health Sciences Building, on the Riverpoint Campus in Spokane's University District.

In this past year, manufacturing also has brought some significant job growth to Spokane County. An estimated 15,700 people worked in that sector as of May, an increase of 900 jobs, or 6.1 percent, as compared with May 2011. Tweedy says some of the hot sectors in manufacturing behind this growth include fabricated metals, chemical, machinery manufacturing, and aerospace-related businesses.

For another major employment sector here, health care, Tweedy expects that sector to see some growth heading forward. Although hospital employment has remained flat, he says, the category of labs and clinics has increased jobs here. For both categories, he says the region had an average of about 34,200 health care jobs in 2011, and in the first five months of 2012, the number averaged 34,400 jobs.

Tweedy also says Employment Security closely watches two numbers—payroll employment and initial claims filed for unemployment insurance.

"When those initial claims go down, jobs go up," he says. At a peak in 2009, those initial claims numbered about 6,300. For most of the months this year, the claims were closer to 2,900, and now are at about 2,500.

Some job growth isn't as easy to measure. Companies are more often finding candidates via networking or word-of-mouth advertising, rather than posting traditional job openings, says John Dickson, Spokane area director for the Employment Security Department.

He says 75 percent to 85 percent of all jobs openings today never are officially posted on job sites, based on U.S. Department of Labor information.

"I'm seeing the same things here; it's been building the past five years," Dickson says. "It's been growing with the advent of the Internet, but now it's even more important than ever with so many people looking for jobs."

He says if estimating the area's unemployment population at about 22,000, with only about 15 percent of jobs posted publicly, "there's a huge rush to a small minority of the jobs that are posted. There are a lot of jobs openings, just a vast majority aren't listed with WorkSource or Craigslist."

People are finding employment in what he calls "the hidden job market," by networking and targeting resumes focused on jobs in growing industries. Job seekers also are being coached to build connections and market their skills, such as through the LinkedIn website, Dickson says.

"The vast majority of people I see are very highly qualified and they're not used to being unemployed," he says. "They know they're great workers; it's just getting back into the labor market now is different than when they initially entered the job market."

The Kiplinger Letter, in its June 15 issue, predicted that robust U.S. job gains aren't likely to be seen before 2014, and then is expected to occur mainly in six sectors: health care, hospitality, construction, manufacturing, business services, and retail.