The record-setting growth in Puget Sound has led people to wonder when the boom will be heard here. Employment in Thurston County grew from 92,400 to 93,600 this year, thanks in large part to service industries. But that's nothing like growth around Seattle, where unemployment is at 2.7 percent. Most of the spillover from there headed north, to Snohomish County, economists say. However, the Thurston County real estate market, a key indicator of economic health, was showing signs of life in early 1998, said Leonard Magazine of Real Estats.
Magazine tracks real estate trends throughout the state.
Residential sales volume was up 27 percent from the first quarter of 1997. On the downside, people in Thurston County and the rest of Washington are closely watching the financial crisis in Asia. It could have significant repercussions in Washington, where one in four jobs is related in one way or another to trade. A log broker, Merrill and Ring, shut down its operations at the Port of Olympia in January. Yet from March 1997 to March 1998, the county was able to add 600 jobs in retail trade and 800 in services.