Seattle Loses 30,000 Jobs Since 2020 Amid Tax Concerns

Seattle and Bellevue

The number that dominates the new comparison between Seattle and Bellevue is not a tax rate. It is 30,000 jobs lost in downtown Seattle since 2020. The same report says the taxable value of Seattle office buildings has fallen 48%, while Bellevue's commercial values have risen 7%. The cities sit only miles apart. Yet the report describes them as moving in opposite directions.

A new report released Monday argues that Seattle's signature tax on large employers is backfiring five years after its adoption. Its case rests on comparison rather than theory. Bellevue has no comparable payroll tax. It also has no comparable social housing tax. The report says Seattle's workforce and property values have shrunk while Bellevue has remained resilient. The gap is not presented as an abstract economic trend. It is presented as the outcome of two tax systems operating side by side.

The report's language is unusually blunt. "Since 2020, what we have seen in downtown Seattle is not a 'jump start,' but instead, a slowdown," it states, turning the name of Seattle's JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax into an indictment of its results. The numbers underneath that claim are severe. Office vacancy in downtown Seattle has climbed to 32%. More than $10 billion in office value has been lost. The DSA report separately states that Seattle office values have fallen 48% since 2019. Buildings do not vote and office towers do not relocate, but falling values record decisions already made elsewhere.

Competition between neighboring cities becomes a test of tax strategy

Those decisions, according to the report, increasingly favor Bellevue. Since 2020, Bellevue has added jobs to its urban core, maintained lower office vacancy and preserved office building values. Its office vacancy rate stands at 24%, compared with Seattle's 32%. Bellevue also has a smaller property tax millage rate than Seattle in 2026. The DSA says the contrast amounts to "a stark tale of two cities and two tax environments just miles apart."

The report presses the point further. "When comparing business tax burdens and broader tax trends in Seattle and Bellevue, the contrast is clear: Bellevue's more favorable tax climate has made it increasingly attractive to employers and investment relative to Seattle," it concludes. The DSA claims this has made Bellevue a more favorable environment for business owners. The argument is not that taxes never work. It is that the burden matters less than where it lands.

That question of concentration runs through the criticism. West Coast Commercial Realty identifies Seattle's JumpStart tax, a recently increased business and occupation tax on large companies, and Washington state's capital gains tax as threats to Seattle's economy. The JumpStart tax targets a handful of the city's largest employers, including Amazon. Former Democratic state senator Nguyen calls that strategy "the worst idea possible". He argues that targeting a narrow tax base creates an unreliable revenue stream. The concern is not simply that large employers pay more. It is that the city becomes more dependent on fewer of them at the same moment the incentives to stay weaken.

Improving civic indicators do not settle the argument over long-term growth

Seattle's defenders see the same tax differently. Mayor Katie Wilson has defended the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax as a bedrock of Seattle's resilience during hard economic times. She argues that the tax was a key reason Seattle bounced back from the worst economic effects of COVID. That defense sits beside another set of numbers from the Downtown Seattle Association itself: crime is falling, more people are moving to Seattle than leaving, and tourism is booming. Yet DSA officials say businesses are rapidly leaving the city.

That contradiction is where the pressure now sits. Seattle can point to improving public safety, population growth and stronger tourism. Bellevue can point to rising commercial values and job growth. But the asset that finances a city's ambitions is not tourism or sentiment. It is the willingness of employers to invest, hire and occupy space. DSA chief executive Jon Scholes says the current trend could tank Seattle's economy in the long run. The uncomfortable fact already embedded in the report is narrower and harder to dismiss: a city that concentrates its tax burden on a handful of major employers cannot afford to discover, years later, that its most durable competitive advantage was proximity to a city that chose not to.