H-1700              _______________________________________________

                                                    HOUSE BILL NO. 911

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State of Washington                              50th Legislature                              1987 Regular Session

By Representatives Wang, C. Smith, Doty and Cole; by request of Joint Select Committee on Unemployment Compensation and Insurance

Read first time 2/13/87 and referred to Committee on Commerce & Labor.

AN ACT Relating to employment data; adding a new section to chapter 50.12 RCW; and creating new sections.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1.     The legislature finds and declares that:

          (1) Many state industries have experienced significant declines in employment in the past few years;

          (2) Many state industries and substate labor markets have high levels of seasonal, cyclical, and structural unemployment;

          (3) The state has lost tens of thousands of higher wage manufacturing jobs;

          (4) The state's per capita annual wage has dropped below the national average;

          (5) Laid-off, older workers and poorly educated workers experience great difficulty finding new employment with wages comparable to their previous earnings;

          (6) Current employment and wage data systems for the agricultural, forestry, and fishing industries are inadequate; and

          (7) Subcounty labor market, social welfare, and demographic information is not systematically collected and analyzed.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2.     It is the intent of section 3 of this act to establish and maintain adequate information systems and reports to monitor the economic well-being of the state's industries, labor markets, and workforce.  The purpose of the monitoring is to improve the state's economic development, job retention, reemployment and retraining efforts, and the state's revenue and social welfare caseload forecasts.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3.  A new section is added to chapter 50.12 RCW to read as follows:

          The employment security department shall submit an annual report to the legislature and the governor that includes but is not limited to:

          (1) Identification and analysis of industries in the United States, Washington state, and local labor markets with high levels of seasonal, cyclical, and structural unemployment;

          (2) The industries and local labor markets with plant closures and mass lay-offs and the number of affected workers;

          (3) An analysis of the major causes of plant closures and mass lay-offs;

          (4) The number of dislocated workers and persons who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, classified by industry, occupation, and local labor markets;

          (5) The experience of the unemployed in their efforts to become reemployed.  This should include research conducted on the continuous wage and benefit history;

          (6) Five-year industry and occupational employment projections;

          (7) Annual and hourly average wage rates by industry and occupation;

          (8) Employment and wage rate data on the agricultural, forestry, and fishing industries by local labor market;

          (9) Subcounty industry and occupational employment and wage data, and unemployment and social welfare data for all class AA and class A counties.