Employment in Spokane County is expected to remain flat or contract slightly next year, after falling by about 320 jobs—or just 0.1 percent—in the latest available figures for this year.

Doug Tweedy, a regional labor economist here for the Washington state Employment Security Department, says average total full-time employment in Spokane County in 2008 through October was 221,860, down barely from 222,180 in the year-earlier period. The loss of 320 jobs is a very small drop, he says.

"2008 has come in flat, but in comparison we have done better than both the state and nation," Tweedy says. "And we've done that because we have a diversity of industries."

Despite a flat projection for 2009, some industries, including manufacturing, even though national manufacturing is down, will show modest gains in employment, he says.

Spokane-area manufacturers in metal fabrication, chemical manufacturing, and plastics and rubber manufacturing, will ring up improved numbers, he says. Other industries with relatively strong outlooks are health care, transportation, and energy, he says.

Grant Forsyth, associate professor of economics at Eastern Washington University, says Spokane and Kootenai counties will be lucky to end up with zero employment growth in 2009. It's more likely that the counties will see a modest contraction, he says.

"My worst-case prediction would be a 1 percent employment decline," Forsyth says. That would be less than the 1.1 percent decline in 2002 for combined non-farm employment in Spokane and Kootenai counties following the start of the 2001 recession, he says.

"The 2001 recession hit the Northwest harder because of its impacts on the technology sector and airline production," he says. "Still, compared to the last recovery, I expect the region's employment recovery to be somewhat slower since this will be a more prolonged recession."

The country already has been in a recession for a year, according to a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a lot of current regional and national economic data indicate the weak economy will continue through most of 2009, Forsyth says.

Spokane-area employers expect to hire at a slow pace during the first quarter of 2009, says Tom Droz, manager of the Spokane office of Manpower Inc., citing findings from Manpower's latest employment outlook survey.

Droz says just 13 percent of the companies here interviewed by Manpower said they plan to hire more employees in the first quarter, down from 23 percent who said they planned to hire more employees in the first quarter of 2008.

Fifteen percent said they expect to reduce payrolls in the first quarter of 2009, while 65 percent said they expect to maintain current staff levels, and 6 percent weren't certain of their plans, he says.

Compared with other metropolitan areas where such surveys are conducted, the Spokane-area employment outlook is one of the weakest in the nation for the first quarter of next year, he says. For the upcoming quarter, job prospects here appear to be best in wholesale and retail trade, financial activities, education and health services, leisure, and hospitality, Droz says.