Seattle-metro professional services jobs, September 2026
Seattle-metro professional and business services employers had 384,300 people on payroll in September 2026, up 0.7% from a year earlier. That is 17.9% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 18.0% a year before.
This is one of the metro’s largest supersectors, and the least understood. It covers professional, scientific and technical services — law, accounting, engineering, architecture, computer systems design — plus the head offices of companies, and administrative support, which includes temp agencies and building services. A good share of what Seattle calls tech work is counted here rather than under ‘information’. The temp-help piece makes it one of the first sectors to cut in a downturn: agency workers are the easiest jobs to end.
The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 398,700 in August 2022 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 10.3% in January 1990, with a high of 18.9% in April 2022 and a low of 10.3% in January 1990 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.
Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, State & Area Employment, professional and business services and total nonfarm payrolls, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED (SEAT653PBSVN, SEAT653NAN). The share is derived at read time. Auto-generated each build.