The week in review: October 19–23
The week of October 19–23 on seattle.metrotrendlines.com, in 14 posts.
Monday, October 19 — Buy or rent: the Seattle ratio, September 2026. The typical Seattle-area home was worth $720,147 in September 2026, and the typical asking rent was $2,250 a month. Divide the first by a year of the second and you get the price-to-rent ratio: 26.7.
Monday, October 19 — Seattle asking rents, September 2026. The typical asking rent in the Seattle metro was $2,250 a month in September 2026, up 1.8% from a year earlier. The second chart takes inflation out.
Monday, October 19 — Battery or plug-in hybrid, September 2026. Washington registered 234,238 battery-electric vehicles and 57,261 plug-in hybrids in September 2026. Batteries are 80% of the state’s electric fleet, and their count is up 11.4% on the year.
Tuesday, October 20 — King County’s electric fleet, September 2026. King County had 115,836 battery-electric vehicles and 24,543 plug-in hybrids registered in September 2026 — batteries are 83% of the county’s electric fleet. The battery count is up 7.7% from a year earlier.
Tuesday, October 20 — How long a Seattle home takes to build, September 2026. Residential building work finished in September 2026 had taken a median of 9.5 months from the day its permit was issued, across 391 completed permits. A year earlier the median was 9.7 months.
Tuesday, October 20 — What a Seattle-area house is worth, September 2026. The typical Seattle-metro home was worth $720,147 in September 2026, down 1.6% from a year earlier.
Wednesday, October 21 — King County overdose deaths, the 12 months to March 2026. 749 King County residents died of a drug overdose in the 12 months to March 2026, by the CDC’s provisional count — down 22.7% from the 12 months to March 2025.
Wednesday, October 21 — Seattle wages after inflation, May 2026. Private-sector workers in the Seattle metro averaged $47.90 an hour in May 2026. Adjusted for inflation that is $48.16 in today’s money, up 2.9% from a year earlier.
Wednesday, October 21 — Seattle-metro payrolls, May 2026. Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue employers reported 2,137,800 nonfarm jobs in May 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), up 500 — +0.0% — from a year earlier.
Thursday, October 22 — Seattle-metro construction jobs, September 2026. The Seattle metro’s construction and mining employers had 124,400 jobs on payroll in September 2026, up 1.1% from a year earlier. That is 5.8% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 5.8% a year before.
Thursday, October 22 — Seattle-metro manufacturing jobs, September 2026. Seattle-metro manufacturers employed 167,900 people in September 2026, up 3.3% from a year earlier — 7.8% of all payroll jobs in the metro. The sector peaked at 246,500 jobs in June 1998 and has shed roughly 32% of that since.
Thursday, October 22 — Seattle taxable retail sales, Q3 2025. Seattle businesses made $9.19 billion in taxable retail sales in Q3 2025, up 4.3% from the same quarter a year earlier, and up 1.5% after inflation.
Friday, October 23 — Restaurant and hotel jobs, September 2026. Seattle-metro restaurants, bars, hotels and venues employed 208,400 people in September 2026, up 1.1% from a year earlier — 9.7% of all payroll jobs in the metro. No other series on this site records 2020 as plainly.
Friday, October 23 — Washington jobless claims, week of Oct 10, 2026. Washington workers filed 5,513 initial unemployment claims in the week ending Oct 10, 2026; the steadier four-week average is 4,870, down 18.0% from the same weeks a year ago. Read the chart in two parts.
The week in review: every post from October 19–23, summarised from its own listing blurb and linked. Assembled each Saturday from the posts that actually published that week.