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Bellevue and Seattle split on jobs
Bellevue and Seattle are moving in opposite directions on jobs. A new Downtown Seattle Association analysis says Seattle lost more than 18,000 jobs between 2024 and 2025, with about 13,000 of those losses concentrated downtown.
Bellevue’s gain made it a notable pocket of employment growth within the broader Puget Sound economy, where job gains have been uneven across neighboring cities. The contrast highlights how differently nearby cities can perform even within the same regional economy.
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Bellevue gains as Seattle slips
Bellevue gained jobs while Seattle’s downtown employment base shrank sharply. The Downtown Seattle Association says roughly 70% of Seattle’s citywide job decline between 2024 and 2025 occurred in the downtown core.
That means the city center carried most of Seattle’s losses. The contrast shows how employment growth can shift within the same metro area, with workers and companies increasingly spread across multiple business centers rather than concentrated in one downtown.
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Bellevue tech growth reshapes region
Technology is an important part of the contrast between Bellevue’s growth and Seattle’s job losses. Seattle’s largest declines were in information and technology and professional services, while Bellevue continued to expand as a major Eastside tech hub…