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Job Trends and Projections

With over 150,000 jobs, Bellevue was the second largest city in Washington State in terms of 2015 employment. Despite fluctuations that correlate with the ups and downs of the economic cycles, the number of jobs in Bellevue has grown at an average annual growth rate of 1.12 percent since 2000. By 2035, the number of jobs in Bellevue is projected to reach 192,800.

Bellevue is a strong, growing and diverse regional economic center.

Bellevue is a regional employment center, with workers commuting to their jobs from throughout the Puget Sound region. In 2006-2010, about 22 percent of Bellevue workers lived in Bellevue, 15 percent in Seattle, another 20 percent in other eastside cities including Renton, and the remaining were spread throughout the region.

Just over three quarters of Bellevue’s employed residents worked in Bellevue (40%), Seattle (21%) or Redmond (15%). Bellevue residents also worked other Eastside communities, South King County, and other places across the region.

Business Openings

The Bellevue economy is quite dynamic, with a large number of business openings, particularly in the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sector.

Primary Industry Clusters

Bellevue's economy is driven by four major industry clusters: Information Technology, Business Services, Retail and Tourism.

Information Technology is the largest, fastest growing and most concentrated industry cluster in Bellevue in terms of employment. Other notable clusters include Tourism, Business Services, Retail and Health, Beauty and Fitness (which includes hospitals and health practitioners).

Workforce Demographics

Bellevue has a highly educated and cosmopolitan population with two-thirds of those 25 and older having a bachelor’s degree or higher (half of whom who have a graduate or professional degree), and with over 39 percent of its population having been born in a foreign country.

About 55 percent of Bellevue workers are in management, business, science and arts occupations, and about 24 percent of Bellevue workers work in the professional, scientific, and management services sector. Also, about 38 percent of Bellevue workers have yearly earnings of $75,000 or more. All of these proportions were higher than those in the state, county and in Seattle.

Business Survey

Watch for Bellevue’s 2017 Business Survey coming this spring.

Read how businesses responded to the 2015 Bellevue Survey of Businesses here.