Seattle-metro trade and transport jobs, September 2026
Seattle-metro trade, transportation and utilities employers had 351,600 people on payroll in September 2026, up 0.7% from a year earlier. That is 16.4% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 16.4% a year before.
The broadest supersector in the survey: wholesale and retail trade, warehousing, trucking, air and water transport, couriers and utilities. It holds the port, the airport and a large part of the non-office e-commerce workforce — BLS files each workplace by what it does, so a fulfilment centre is warehousing even when the company is thought of as tech. Its share has drifted down for most of the series as other sectors grew faster, which is the shape of a metro whose growth moved into offices.
The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 367,200 in December 2021 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 20.8% in January 1990, with a high of 21.2% in December 1990 and a low of 16.3% in May 2026 — 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, trade, transportation and utilities and total nonfarm payrolls, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED (SEAT653TRADN, SEAT653NAN). The share is derived at read time. Auto-generated each build.