OLYMPIA — New unemployment figures released by the Washington State Employment Security Department this week contained, predictably, bad news for Pacific County.

The monthly data, released on Jan. 26, pegged the county’s unemployment rate at 10.7% in December, up from 8.6% in November and the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state. The county’s leisure and hospitality industry, a critical part of the Long Beach Peninsula economy, bore the overwhelming brunt of job losses in the county.

While the data is preliminary, Pacific County is set to close out a year with its highest unemployment rate since 2013, when the unemployment rate was 11.5%. December’s unemployment rate is 57.4% higher than December 2019, when the unemployment rate of 6.8% was the lowest to end a year since at least 1990.

The civilian labor force in Pacific County also shrunk to just 7,642 in December, the lowest it’s been since 1992.

Nonfarm employment shrunk from an estimated 5,370 jobs in November to 5,200 jobs in December, a loss of about 170 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry comprised about 70% of the monthly losses, shedding 120 jobs — going from about 810 to 690 jobs.

The year-over-year job losses are also, not surprisingly, brutal for the leisure and hospitality industry in Pacific County. Employment is down 27.4% in the industry compared to December 2019. Other industries with steep losses compared to a year ago include trade, transportation and utilities — down 13.5% — and retail trade — down 13.1%.

Reopening effort stalled out

For the third consecutive week, the Washington State Department of Health announced on Jan. 22 that none of the state’s eight regions qualified to advance to Phase 2 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Roadmap to Recovery” plan for this week.

To advance from the initial phase, a region must satisfy four metrics outlined in the plan, which includes seeing a decrease (at least 10%) of new covid-19 cases and hospital admissions over a 14-day period per 100,000 people, having the average occupancy of ICU-staffed beds over a 7-day period below 90%, and having a covid-19 testing positivity rate below 10% over a 7-day period.

In the most recent update, the West region — consisting of Pacific, Grays Harbor, Lewis and Thurston counties — met two of the four metrics, and came close to meeting a third. The average 7-day occupancy rate of ICU-staffed beds in the region was 88%, and the 7-day positivity rate of covid-19 tests was 9%. The 14-day trend of new covid-19 cases was -8% — the largest decrease among the eight regions — and the trend of new covid-19 hospital admission was +14%.