Northwest Living | Bellingham Real Estate Market

 Whatcom County’s unemployment rate plunged with the help of 500 high-wage manufacturing jobs. This is exactly what our local economy needed to keep thing’s rolling around Whatcom County.  Couple this news along with the recent good news with the big increases in local retail sales should be a big plus for the local housing sector as well.  Interest rates seem to have settled in an area of about 6.10% to 6.40% range, with predictions that they should remain stable thru-out all of 2007.

It’s expected that even more jobs are to be added in the coming months.  For instance Alcoa’s Intalco located in Ferndale, WA is in the process of hiring 170 people while opening its second pot line early next year. So far the company has hired about 70 people.  The challenge appears to be finding available tradespeople such as millrights.  BP Cherry Point is expecting to hire 20 new employees soon and another 20 in January.  

My father-in law, who’s a pipe fitter, has been up here for months working at the Ferndale WA BP plant.  He says that both BP and Conoca are both gearing up for production, which means more hiring coming down the road.  Even the paper is saying here that on a typical day there are 600 construction tradesman working at the refinery.  Even if these tradesman are from out of the area…they are adding to retail sales for sure.