Employment situation and outlook

Yesterday I went to the Central Washington 2010 Economic Symposium in Yakima and, interestingly, it gave me still more insight into how we got into the Upper County well moratorium mess, as well as into the entire employment situation in Kittitas County.

One strong message was that the economy has drastically changed compared to where it was 5 years ago, and the way forward will be very different from the recent past. Kittitas County is worse off than other Central Washington counties in some ways, and better off in other ways. As you might expect, the overall effect was both sobering and encouraging, with some clues about how to go about strengthening Kittitas County's economy.