By Aaron Burkhalter and The Associated Press

While Washington state’s unemployment rate continued to grow to 9.4 percent in May, Skagit County saw some of the first job increases in months.

The county had its second straight month of either no change or a decline in the jobless rate in May, with 1,100 new jobs in the area according to the Washington State Employment Security Department.

“That’s a really big increase, much bigger than the state,” Joe Giannamore, regional economist for Northwest Washington, said Tuesday.

Skagit County reported 10.1 percent unemployment, down from April’s seasonally adjusted 10.4 percent. The biggest job growth came in leisure and hospitality, which grew 6.5 percent with 300 new jobs.

Island and San Juan counties also saw the jobless rate drop slightly. Island County reported 8.8 percent unemployment in May, down from an adjusted 8.9 percent in April. San Juan County dropped to 6.2 percent from 6.7 percent in April.

Unemployment in the rest of the state continued its rise, hitting 9.4 percent, up from 9 percent in April.

More than 327,000 people in the state were unemployed and looking for work in May, with about 215,218 receiving unemployment benefits, according to the Employment Security Department.

The last time the state’s unemployment rate was comparable was in April and March of 1984, when it was 9.3 percent and February of 1984, when it was 9.6 percent.

“The recession has been deep and wide, and we’re likely to see ups and downs for a while,” Greg Weeks, director of the department’s Labor Market and Economic Analysis unit, said in a prepared statement.

Weeks said he wants to see three or more months of improvement or little change before he’s convinced that the recession has bottomed out.

“The unemployment rate is a relatively volatile measure of the state of the economy,” Weeks said. “I would like to look at two or three months of leveling off.”

Mary Ayala, chief economist for the Employment Security Department, said one promising sign is that while the unemployment rate is continuing to climb, the number of jobs that are lost from month to month is decelerating slightly.

For example, the state lost only 6,700 jobs in May.

“Prior to April, we might have exhibited 20,000 jobs in a month; the last few months it’s really decreased,” Ayala said.

New unemployment applications also dropped in May to 55,000, down from 63,000 in April.

Arun Raha, the state’s chief economist, said the pace of job losses should slow in the coming months, with state unemployment expected to peak in the second quarter of 2010 at 10.6 percent. Unemployment typically lags an economic recovery.

The highest unemployment rate in the state since the mid-1970s was in November 1982, when it hit 12.2 percent.

Eastern Washington is home to both the highest and lowest rate in the state: Pend Oreille County has a 14.7 percent unemployment rate while Whitman County is at just 5.3 percent. On the west side, the state’s largest county, King, had a jobless rate of 8 percent.

Giannamore cautioned that the unemployment rate could still grow before the economy fully recovers.

“Overall, what’s going to happen is still unknown,” Giannamore said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the unemployment rate were to increase again over the next two months. Predicting the future is really uncertain at this point.”