I’ve spent a lot of time over the years at tables and in meetings where conversations felt urgent, but the response ended up being fragmented. Case in point: economic competitiveness. Business leaders have been raising concerns about fiscal sustainability, the cost of doing business, and the risk of taking Washington’s economy for granted.
Some policymakers have responded accordingly, which we have appreciated. But for far too many, these concerns didn’t seem to register much at all. And with some policymakers, there was almost hostility there, as if acknowledging economic concerns compromised some part of their agenda.
But something different is happening that’s worth paying attention to. In a fairly compressed window of time, serious efforts around these exact concerns are being mobilized at every level of government and civic leadership in our state, simultaneously.
At the state level, Governor Bob Ferguson’s Economic Development Council has brought together 26 leaders across business, labor, higher education, and tribes to develop a cohesive statewide economic strategy and reduce barriers to business growth. On a parallel track, House Speaker Laurie Jinkins is convening lawmakers to build a jobs package targeting the business climate, workforce readiness, and energy development. Both of these are good moves, and we appreciate this leadership.
At the regional level, Challenge Seattle CEO and former Governor Chris Gregoire launched the Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound— a regional effort covering King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties, with seven goals and 20 recommendations backed by a Mayors’ Playbook.
Examples at the local level in the Puget Sound region: Bellevue adopted its 2026–2031 Economic Development Plan earlier this year. Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin realigned her city’s resources around economic development through a formal mayoral directive. And Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson recently launched the Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force.
The urgency behind all of this is real, and data tells the story from multiple levels:
- At the state level, Washington’s unemployment rate stands at 4.9% — well above the national average of 4.1%.
- At the regional level, the Challenge Seattle report Keeping Puget Sound Strong documents that the region lost nearly 7,000 jobs in 2025 — the first time since at least 2005, outside of the Great Recession or COVID-19 pandemic, that the region’s employment growth has trailed the national average.
Then there’s a new report commissioned by the city of Seattle, Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy, which is direct about where we’ve been losing ground, particularly as it relates to the tech sector that makes up so much of the regional economy:
- Between 2017 and 2023, the Seattle metro added 16 net new mid-sized tech firms, compared to 104 in San Francisco and 53 in Austin.
- Of the 303 tech companies founded in the Seattle metro between 2015 and 2019, only 33 grew to 50 or more employees — a graduation rate of roughly 11%, compared to more than 20% in San Francisco and 15% in Austin.
Two other important points the report makes: One, Seattle policymakers have made choices to concentrate the business tax burden on a small number of companies – something that is both a business disincentive but also makes the city of Seattle financially reliant on revenue that could be volatile. And two, the report makes it clear that we absolutely can’t compromise the tech sector we have, AND we need to intentionally grow the kinds of businesses that can thrive in that ecosystem. We couldn’t agree more.
To that point, Seattle is generating companies but not growing them at the rate it needs to, and the city’s JumpStart payroll tax is part of the “why.” That was clear in the Downtown Seattle Association’s report, JumpStart Promised Growth. Seattle Got an Economic Slowdown.
But an uncompetitive tax climate is just one of the pressures businesses face in our state. As our Prices We Pay research documents, Washington businesses aren’t facing a single cost pressure — they’re facing a convergence of many: wages, cascading labor costs, taxes, regulatory compliance, occupancy, inflation, and tariffs, all moving up over the past decade. Businesses are resilient, innovative, and do their best, but they can’t absorb all those costs indefinitely, so those costs show up at the cash register, on the menu, and in the monthly childcare bill. It’s a big part of why every metropolitan area in this state is among the nation’s priciest, and why consumer spending per person in Washington has risen 55% over the past decade, nearly double the rate of inflation.
So that’s the landscape these new government and civic conversations are responding to. And most importantly, behind every one of these numbers is a worker, a family, a business owner trying to make the math work here. That’s who these conversations need to produce outcomes for.
These new efforts around the economy, jobs, and economic development make me encouraged. Encouraged because the alignment taking shape right now is something we haven’t seen in a long time, and because employers are in the room.
The Washington Roundtable and our partners across the business community have been doing the research and making the case for exactly the kind of coordinated economic strategy these efforts are now pursuing. We are at multiple tables simultaneously, bringing data, perspective, and partnership to get the policy right, and there is real opportunity ahead. Opportunity to examine the cumulative impact of our tax structure and reform it to deliver a simple, fair, competitive, and predictable tax code that better supports businesses and families. Opportunity to pace new mandates so costs don’t compound simultaneously, and to modernize regulatory compliance and make permitting faster and more predictable. Opportunity to treat education, training, and talent development as real economic infrastructure. And opportunity to lead in industries like clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and the innovations that will come with AI.
Lastly, every time we talk about our challenges and what we need to address them, we also need to remember that anything we do is an opportunity to build on and leverage incredible assets. Washington has the talent, the companies, the infrastructure, and the civic will to get this right. We’re not a community starting from scratch, we’re a community starting from being the envy of regions around the country. The point is that we’re entering an economic period that needs intention to ensure we remain that way. The right conversations are now happening to do that. And, at the Washington Roundtable, we are here for it.