State unemployment has another flat month

OLYMPIA — Washington state’s unemployment rate for March remained flat at 8.3 percent, but the state added 3,000 jobs last month, marking the 15th consecutive month of job growth, state officials said today. The new rate for March was 8.3 percent, which matched the upwardly revised rate for February, the state’s Employment Security Department said. The state’s jobless rate is slightly higher than the national rate of 8.2 percent. Industries that had the most job growth last month included government, retail trade and manufacturing. Most of the government-sector job growth was seen in schools and higher education, while state agencies and the federal government lost jobs. Only two industry sectors lost jobs: education and health services; and transportation, warehousing and utilities. More than 289,000 people were unemployed and looking for work in March, down from a peak of more than 365,000 in February 2010. More than 189,000 people received unemployment benefits last month. As of April 7, more than 77,000 workers in the state had exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. An additional 12,500 will lose their benefits by the end of this week because of an automatic end of extended benefits due to a sustained decrease in the state’s unemployment rate. By mid-June, another 11,000 people will likely run out of benefits, officials said.