While job market lags, government grows
Hospitals second-largest employer; Kaiser Aluminum down to fewer than 500 jobs locally

John Stucke
Staff writer

Government -- federal, state and local -- dominates the list of top employers in Spokane County.

There were more than 30,000 government jobs in Spokane County in 2000, according to the most recent state Employment Security Department figures. The numbers do not include 5,419 airmen stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base, which is the region's single largest employer.

Government employment is expected to rise 1.1 percent each year this decade, reaching 33,900 by 2005, and 36,400 by 2010.

With above-average wages and benefits, stable government employment is a plus for this region, said Beth Thew, secretary treasurer of the Spokane Regional Labor Council.

"Here's why government jobs are so important: Our major employers are ourselves. This means we're not dependent on a company stationed in Chicago or Houston or offshore," Thew said. "It's headquartered right here in our community."

A vast majority of public-sector jobs outside the military are union, from teachers to police officers to letter carriers. Those jobs, said Thew, have helped keep membership rolls stable as the numbers for traditional organized labor sectors such as manufacturing have dropped.

Excluding Fairchild, there are about 4,500 federal jobs in the county. Various state agencies and colleges account for another 10,000. Local government, including schools, city and county personnel, add another 17,600 employees, according to the state Employment Security Department.

Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business, said although high numbers of government employees can cause concern in the private sector, there's no question government payrolls are important to the economy at the local level.

"I think the question we must ask is, `What are the appropriate services government provides?' " said Brunell. "For Spokane, it could be that 32,000 is too few or too many. We really don't know."

Mark Turner, president and CEO of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council, said the large number of government workers shouldn't be surprising since Spokane serves as a regional business hub.

He pointed to education as an example.

"Those numbers include the school districts and the community colleges. In my view, that's a very good thing and indicative of the investment the community makes in education," Turner said. "This is an area where our regionalism shines."

Spokane School District 81, with its approximately 3,500 full-time employees, is the second-leading employer in the county.

In Kootenai County, the Coeur d'Alene School District employs about 983 people, making it the second-largest full-time employer in North Idaho's most populous county. Only Kootenai Medical Center, with 1,288 workers, employs more people.

The largest private employers in Kootenai County are Center Partners, which has about 1,400 full- and part-time workers at its call centers in Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene, and Hagadone Hospitality, with between 900 and 1,000 employees.

David Bunting, an economics professor at Eastern Washington University, said comparing government agencies to private-sector employers further underscores the importance of government jobs.

"You put all this together and there's no question of government's importance to Spokane," Bunting said. "Public employment in Spokane is above 20 percent."

After Fairchild and District 81, the employers with more than 1,000 full-time workers include mostly more government agencies and the two nonprofit hospital operators -- Providence Services Corp., with a total of 3,959 full-time employees at Sacred Heart Medical Center and Holy Family Hospital, and Empire Health Services, with 2,043 employees at Deaconess Medical Center and Valley Hospital and Medical Center.

The largest for-profit employer in the region is URM Stores Inc., the grocery distributor with 1,439 employees. URM also operates seven Rosauers supermarkets in the region and the small Huckleberry's grocery on the lower South Hill.

Avista Corp., the region's utility, has about 1,274 employees in the county.

Noticeably absent from a list of biggest county employers is Kaiser Aluminum Corp. For years a dominant manufacturing employer, Houston-based Kaiser had more than 4,000 workers on its local payroll. Today, Kaiser has about 475.

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