SEATTLE, Wash. — A new report shows Seattle lost thousands of jobs between 2024 and 2025. Most of them were in Downtown.
The Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) found Seattle lost more than 18,000 jobs between 2024 and 2025. Around 13,000 of those jobs, or about 70%, were located downtown.
Over the same period, DSA found that other regional cities, like Bellevue and Tacoma, increased total employment by 5,375 and 662 jobs, respectively.
DSA says Seattle still remains the region’s largest employment center, but officials warn the city is not in the same position as it was 10 years ago.
“Not all cities are facing the same sort of challenges related to job loss that Seattle is,” said Dennis Sills, DSA’s Vice President of Advocacy and Economic Development.
Sills says part of the issue is that “there are a number of tax structures within the city that fall squarely on businesses.” He points to the Jump Start payroll tax, which taxes payroll on large employers.
“We’ve seen since that was enacted, job loss in Downtown,” he said.
Sills and the DSA are optimistic about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed 2027-2028 budget, which she released in September. It includes no additional business taxes.
KIRO 7 spoke to people who work Downtown about what they’re seeing.
“I haven’t really noticed a trend one way or another,” said Fred Ness, who has worked at Dahlia Bakery the last few years.
Ness said the bakery’s customer base also includes residents and tourists, which especially surge in the summer.
“There are always people living downtown,” Ness said. “Lots of people love to live downtown, and they’re not going anywhere from what I’ve seen.”
KIRO 7 asked DSA officials whether residential and visitor numbers could make up for the jobs lost.
“We’re seeing a record level of people living downtown, over 110,000 people now call downtown home, which is great,” Sills said. “But it’s an ecosystem that largely relies on amenities, services, and jobs.”
Sills says to remedy these losses, the city should focus on proactive policies, including investing in the Office of Economic Development. Looking at a variety of existing taxes that impact businesses would help too.
“Predictability is so important in the business community,” Sills said. “People are making long-term bets on their investments when they’re thinking about whether to build here, whether to grow their job and workforce, whether to stay. And what we’ve seen are changing policies over the last several years at the city level that make it very difficult for business leaders to understand where things will stand.”
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