Downtown Seattle lost 13,000 jobs in a year while Bellevue gained 5,375, report finds
A Downtown Seattle Association report points to a shift in tech employment across Lake Washington, with Amazon a large part of the story.
Seattle shed 18,065 jobs between 2024 and 2025, and about 70 per cent of those losses, roughly 13,000 jobs, came from the city's downtown core, according to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association, GeekWire reported on Wednesday.
Over the same period, neighbouring Bellevue gained 5,375 jobs. Amazon employed 15,700 workers in Bellevue at the end of 2025, making it the city's largest employer at 9.85 per cent of the workforce, according to Bellevue's annual financial report. Amazon employs about 49,000 people in Seattle proper.
The report found Seattle's sharpest declines in information and technology, professional services and construction. Inbound commuter visits to downtown Seattle remain in the low 60 per cent range of 2019 levels, and the Puget Sound region ranked 20th among the top 30 U.S. metro areas for job growth between 2019 and 2025.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has pushed back against blaming downtown's struggles on any single tax, pointing to remote work, high interest rates and national tech restructuring, GeekWire reported.
For Vancouver firms competing for Cascadia tech talent, the shift east of Lake Washington is worth watching.
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