SEATTLE —
“It’s not necessarily surprising that some of that demand has diminished and wasn’t necessarily sustainable in the long run,” said Anneliese Vance-Sherman, an Employment Security Department regional economist who covers the Seattle-area job market. “And here we are.” Amazon alone had around 75,000 workers in the Seattle area as of 2021, up from 53,500 in 2019, said Jacob Vigdor, an economist with the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy, who follows state and local job markets.
That opportunistic attitude is echoed by many nontech employers that also need tech talent to manage the growing digital parts of their operations. “The companies you would expect to call back like Apple or Microsoft seem to be holding back,” they said, “but companies like Remitly or Shopify are actively hiring.”