From the resident-run scorecard that grades Spokane’s economy four times a year
The largest employer. The sectors that carry the jobs. Where the growth is. Every figure links to a public source. The page refreshes each quarter with the scorecard.
Spokane County’s largest employer is Fairchild Air Force Base. Four of the top 12 are health care organizations. Most of the biggest job engines here are not private companies.
A fully ranked list with employee counts is published in the Journal of Business Book of Lists. That list is paid. This page sticks to what a reader can check free. It will carry a full ranked table when a current public list appears. If you publish one, it gets linked here.
Employers come and go. Sectors are the steadier truth. The public record covers them completely. Here is each major sector’s change since 2019. The counts come from unemployment insurance records.
| Sector | Change | 2019 → 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Health care & social assistance | +6,159 | 42,667 → 48,826 |
| Transportation & warehousing | +5,059 | 6,085 → 11,144 |
| Government (all levels) | +1,460 | 35,860 → 37,320 |
| Admin & support services | +1,459 | 11,531 → 12,990 |
| Professional & technical services | +1,240 | 10,534 → 11,774 |
| Arts & recreation | +882 | 2,962 → 3,844 |
| Construction | +784 | 12,751 → 13,535 |
| Private education | +705 | 4,052 → 4,757 |
| Other services | +581 | 6,195 → 6,776 |
| Wholesale trade | +179 | 10,303 → 10,482 |
| Utilities | +64 | 327 → 391 |
| Real estate | +49 | 3,790 → 3,839 |
| Mining | +40 | 234 → 274 |
| Hotels & restaurants | -199 | 20,008 → 19,809 |
| Farming & forestry | -230 | 1,772 → 1,542 |
| Manufacturing | -350 | 16,338 → 15,988 |
| Information | -482 | 3,095 → 2,613 |
| Retail trade | -600 | 26,832 → 26,232 |
| Company management | -693 | 3,348 → 2,655 |
| Finance & insurance | -902 | 9,817 → 8,915 |
Two sectors carry three in four net new jobs since 2019. They are health care, and transportation & warehousing. Manufacturing, finance, information and retail all shrank. That much riding on two sectors is one of the scorecard’s three weak grades. See the hiring card.
A base, hospitals, schools and government make steady paychecks. Steady is worth a lot. But they do not bring much new money into the region. An exporter does. When an employer that sells outside the region arrives, its payroll ripples into local shops, clinics and trades. The employer calculator shows that ripple, industry by industry, with its sources shown.
The open question is whether Spokane can attract more employers like that. Right now the scorecard grades the region off track.
Sector jobs come from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for Spokane County. The exact rows are committed and downloadable above. The largest-employer and top-12 claims come from Greater Spokane Inc. That group cites the Journal of Business 2025 Book of Lists. Those are reported claims. They carry their source, and they are not this scorecard’s own count.
This page was last updated in September 2026 and is refreshed each quarter. If a number here is wrong, say so, and it gets fixed in public with a note in the change log.