Editor’s note: GeekWire has been examining the economic challenges facing Seattle and the lessons the region can learn from Cleveland’s industrial decline and ongoing comeback. This three-part series from GeekWire columnist and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald explores how Seattle can navigate its own economic transition, adapt to a changing technology landscape, and preserve the prosperity that generations of innovation have built.

As you think about Seattle’s next act, let me offer a catchphrase: Don’t be Cleveland.

Before anyone from Northeast Ohio takes me to task again, let me quickly clarify: Don’t be the Cleveland of the last half of the 20th century. Today’s Cleveland is a story Seattle should study.

I’m far from the only one worried about Seattle. City Hall, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and the newly formed Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound are all sounding alarms about the region’s economic future.

An independent 127-page City of Seattle-commissioned economic assessment — Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy — takes issue with the Cleveland comparison I penned for GeekWire earlier this year. The report says claims that Seattle could become the “next Cleveland” are “likely hyperbolic,” while acknowledging that “Seattle has real economic challenges.”

Hyperbolic is far from the worst thing I’ve been called.

Despite a reluctance to fully embrace Cleveland as a cautionary tale, the city’s report provides more to agree with than disagree with. And kudos to the city for taking an honest look at the economy, including criticism of the mayor’s signature policies.

Preparing for Seattle’s Next Act

Over the past decade, Seattle delivered more broad-based prosperity than almost any U.S. region, according to the Seawall report. Wages rose across the income spectrum, with the biggest gains at the bottom. Even after adjusting for living costs, workers at the 25th percentile earned roughly 15% more than their counterparts in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.

That’s a remarkable record.

It also makes Seattle’s current economic anxiety harder to dismiss — and its prosperity worth protecting. If Seattle’s performance disappoints, where exactly would you rather be? Growth brings problems, especially when poorly managed. But the alternative is worse.

We saw the aftermath firsthand when we visited Cleveland earlier this year. Its story is a reminder that prosperity isn’t permanent — and rebuilding an economy after decades of decline is a lot harder than keeping one healthy.

Much like Seattle today, Cleveland 75 years ago was a very successful city riding decades of strong economic and population growth, and home to some of that era’s Big Tech giants. The Cleveland Browns even dominated the 1950s NFL.

But Cleveland’s prosperity unraveled quickly. 

The world changed. The Rust Belt started to rust. Employers closed down. 

Cleveland’s population dropped 59% from its 1950 peak to 2020 — from 914,808 to 372,624 residents.

It went from one of the nation’s richest cities to one of the poorest. Seahawks fans take note: the Browns have never been to the Super Bowl.

When we visited Cleveland earlier this year, we asked everyone from the mayor to real estate developers to arts leaders what they wish they’d done differently and sought their advice for Seattle. 

We learned a lot from a city hungry, united and focused on building prosperity for its residents.

Seattle rode the software boom to remarkable prosperity. Can it do the same in the AI era?

The warning signs are hard to ignore.

Amazon and Microsoft have cut more than 10,000 jobs across the Seattle metro area since 2023. Downtown office vacancy remains among the highest in the country. And the center of gravity for the AI boom is in the Bay Area, raising questions about Seattle’s ability to capture the next wave of growth.

The city’s economic report puts the challenge bluntly: “The version of the tech sector that drove the last wave of economic growth will not drive the next one.”

The report warns that Seattle’s next generation of startups may not be ready to replace the growth engines of the past. The risk isn’t just layoffs or empty office towers. It’s the company never founded, the midsize business squeezed by rising costs, or the engineer who leaves to build a startup somewhere else.

So how does Seattle prepare for its next economic chapter?

A Grand Unified Theory of Urban Success: Attract People

At its simplest, a city’s job is to attract people — and give them reasons to stay.

Population isn’t a perfect measure of prosperity, but it’s a useful proxy for a city’s appeal. People come for opportunity. They stay when the opportunities and quality of life are worth it. Growth brings challenges, but those are preferable to the alternative.

As Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb told us, “I envy problems around growth.”

Seattle’s population has grown nearly 40% since 2000. 

But that growth is slowing as our economic engine sputters.

The Boeing Bust of the 1970s, when Seattle’s population fell 7% and unemployment hit 17%, is a reminder that what goes up can come down.

Today, cities compete globally for talent, entrepreneurs and employers. That competition will only intensify as populations age and immigration restrictions tighten.

The most talented workers and entrepreneurs can go where they see the greatest opportunity — and where they feel wanted.

Consider what Seattle’s last century might have looked like without three people: Bill Boeing, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

Boeing helped turn Seattle into an aerospace powerhouse. Gates chose to move Microsoft from Albuquerque to the Seattle area to usher in the software boom. Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie, famously drove their Chevy Blazer from Texas to Seattle to start Amazon.

Each helped shape the region’s economic future. We can’t predict who the next generation of business builders will be. But does Seattle have the same pull today? Or are the people we need choosing Austin, Miami, San Francisco or somewhere else?

Attracting newcomers matters. So does keeping the people who are already here. Do the economic opportunities still justify the cost of living? Is Seattle still a place where people want to live, work and play?

Residents have plenty of reasons to question the deal: public safety, housing costs, homelessness, schools, government services and taxes. Do the positives still outweigh the negatives?

Decades of growth brought extraordinary people and companies to Seattle. Our best chance of building the next era of prosperity is to keep them here — and give them room to build what comes next.

Yet we risk losing people and businesses we can’t easily replace: talented workers, entrepreneurs, executives, inventors, technologists, engineering teams and global headquarters.

As Seattle’s mayor waves goodbye to departing business leaders, the city’s own Seawall report offers a blunt warning: “Headquarters and top-tier tech jobs are very hard to replace.”

The report makes the broader case for growth, too. Losing tech jobs and companies won’t make Seattle more equitable, it warns. “If they leave, Seattle won’t become more equal, it will just become poorer.”

There’s a practical reason for that. Seattle’s fiscal model depends on a growing economy. 

More residents and businesses generate property and sales tax revenue without requiring higher tax rates on those already here. As the report puts it, “it is easier to distribute the benefits of a growing pie than a fixed one.”

That’s another way of saying that when government spending outpaces population growth, a stagnant economy leaves fewer options for paying the bills — a challenge we’ll revisit in the next post.

Thanks to Cleveland for reminding us prosperity is fragile, decline is real, and recovery can take generations. 

Seattle’s next era of prosperity is ours to build — or squander.

In the next post, we’ll look at what Seattle needs to do to get the fundamentals right to ensure the city is a great place to live, work and play.

Seattle embraced the global spotlight and rode a wave of economic euphoria when the FIFA World Cup came to town this summer, but according to new voter data out Tuesday, the city let that momentum slip away just as downtown businesses and major tech employers grapple with an ongoing economic squeeze.

The eleventh edition of The Index, a semiannual survey tracking voter sentiment commissioned by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, reveals a sharp erosion in public confidence regarding the city’s economic trajectory.

According to polling of 700 Seattle voters conducted from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1 by public opinion research firm Fulcrum Strategic Group, 68% believe the city’s economy is getting weaker, 22% think it’s staying the same, and just 10% say it’s stronger.

While voters point to persistent quality-of-life concerns like public safety, homelessness and affordability, the findings underscore growing anxiety over Seattle’s business climate, at a time when major tech employers continue to evaluate their regional footprint and shift jobs across Lake Washington.

Seattle Metro Chamber President and CEO Joe Nguyen said the World Cup brought an energy and excitement downtown that was real and positive. But after a few months, there’s been no sustained honeymoon, and 65% of voters feel Seattle is losing positive momentum on public safety and quality of life.

“We demonstrated as a region what is possible when we all work together, and folks are already feeling that shift away,” Nguyen said during a media briefing Tuesday.

While chief concerns in the survey center on crime and public safety, economic health follows closely behind. In addition to widespread pessimism about the city’s overall trajectory, 71% of respondents agree that businesses are closing down or leaving for nearby cities because the cost of doing business in Seattle has gotten too high. Furthermore, 95% of those surveyed say it is difficult for small businesses to operate in the city.

When it comes to major employers — the tech giants and large corporations such as Amazon that anchor the regional economy and bear the brunt of taxes like the city’s JumpStart payroll levy — the survey reveals a striking disconnect.

The survey found 70% of voters recognize large businesses as essential to Seattle’s success, defying the narrative that the local electorate is anti-business. Andrew Thibault, partner at survey conductor Fulcrum Strategic Group, called it “the most interesting section” in the whole survey.

“Voters here deeply understand that their quality of life is connected to the health of the business environment and our ability to afford the things that we want to afford, like transit and schools, and environmental protections,” Thibault said. “All of those depend on a healthy business environment.”

But a significant knowledge gap persists around tax contributions. Voters estimated on average that large businesses pay just 37% of the city’s total tax revenue, with three-quarters believing that figure sits below 50%. In actuality, businesses pay 68% — more than two-thirds — of all city taxes, according to a recent tax analysis from the Chamber.

Underlying economic anxiety is playing out directly in City Hall’s budget debates. As major employers and tech giants navigate a shifting economic landscape — including recent reports showing downtown Seattle shedding 13,000 jobs in a single year while neighboring Bellevue’s tech hub expanded — voters are demanding a tighter rein on city spending.

The Index reveals that 66% of Seattle voters distrust the city to spend tax dollars responsibly, and nearly eight in 10 support requiring City Hall to prove existing spending is producing results before asking residents or major employers to pay more.

Those sentiments carry heavy weight as the city grapples with its budget. Facing what officials call “seismic shifts” in the tech sector, Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed budget attempts to close a massive deficit through spending cuts while freezing the rates for corporate levies like the JumpStart payroll tax.

For Nguyen and the Chamber, the message from voters is clear: City Hall must focus on tangible delivery with existing resources rather than continuous policy shifts and progressive tax increases.

Pointing to the city’s reliance on core revenue streams like business and occupation (B&O), sales, and JumpStart taxes, Nguyen emphasized the risk of over-targeting a concentrated corporate base.

“Finagling with it too much creates a problem where the people who are reliant upon paying the taxes are also the ones being targeted,” Nguyen said. “So if they leave, it creates a multiplier effect in the wrong direction.”

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is bringing together leaders from Amazon, Spotify, the Port of Seattle, organized labor, technology, cleantech, small business and other sectors as part of a new task force focused on rebuilding and diversifying the city’s economy.

Wilson on Wednesday announced 18 members of the Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force, which will look for ways to remove barriers to business growth, attract and retain companies and improve the process of starting and operating a business in Seattle.

“I’m charging this task force with identifying where the City can make connections, remove barriers and provide support within individual industries and across our economy,” Wilson said. “We need to diversify our economy while expanding opportunities for local entrepreneurs and young people.”

The effort builds on the city’s recently released Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy report, which called for Seattle to diversify beyond its heavy reliance on large technology companies and focus on sectors including artificial intelligence, cleantech, maritime, life sciences and space.

That report found that companies with at least 100 employees accounted for 74.5% of net job growth in the Seattle metro area from 2014 to 2023, while mid-sized companies accounted for just 16.6%.

The economic challenges have also put a spotlight on Seattle’s tax structure. As GeekWire recently reported, Seattle lost roughly 24,000 jobs between March 2020 and March 2025 even as city tax collections continued to grow, shifting more of the tax burden onto businesses.

Wilson has responded in part by freezing JumpStart tax rates in her proposed 2027 budget, citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector.

The new task force will initially focus on downtown revitalization, business attraction and retention, cross-sector collaboration, and making it easier to open and operate a business. The task force also comes as Seattle’s business community has pressed City Hall for action on public safety, with dozens of regional CEOs recently calling for a 100-day plan with measurable goals and progress reports.

“Seattle is open for business,” said Beto Yarce, director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development.

The task force will hold industry-specific roundtables and listening sessions this year, with initial findings due in February 2027 and a final report expected in November 2027. Here’s a look at the task force members:

• Alvertis Brooks, Executive Director, Rainier Valley Community Development Fund 

• Anson Fatland, Associate Vice Provost for Innovation Strategy & Ventures, University of Washington Co-Motion 

• Bill Frame, Chairman & CEO, Kidder Mathews 

• Cate Bridenstine, CEO, The Imagine Institute 

• Dae Shik Kim, Executive Development Producer, Spotify & Get Me Outta Here 

• Donna Moodie, Chief Impact Officer, Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and Founder & CEO, Marjorie Restaurants 

• Jared Axelrod, Sr. Manager, Public Policy, Amazon 

• Joe Nguyen, President & CEO, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce 

• Katie Garrow, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, MLK Labor 

• Laura Clise, Founder & CEO, Intentionalist 

• Marcus Lalario, Founder & CEO, Sugarshack Unlimited 

• Mel Clark, President & CEO, Cleantech Alliance 

• Rian Watt, Executive Director, Economic Opportunity Institute 

• Ryan Calkins, President, Port of Seattle 

• Shannon Braddock, President & CEO, Greater Seattle Partners 

• Tammy Canavan, President & CEO, Visit Seattle 

• Terrance Stevenson, Director of Industry and Community Relations, Washington Technology Industry Association 

• Yifan Zhang, Managing Director, AI House 

Tech remade Seattle and San Francisco over the past three decades, bringing jobs and wealth along with soaring housing costs and a political backlash. Now the AI boom is hitting both cities, before either has resolved the tensions that have repeatedly divided their communities.

That’s the subject of this week’s GeekWire Podcast, a live joint taping with the Blue City Blues podcast at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. GeekWire co-founder John Cook joins historian Margaret O’Mara, author of “The Code,” and San Francisco journalist Jonathan Weber, author of “City on the Edge,” with Blue City Blues hosts David Hyde and Sandeep Kaushik.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the conversation.

The tech industry’s conflicts in Seattle and San Francisco began when the industry moved out of the suburbs and into the middle of both cities.

Silicon Valley grew up 30 to 40 miles south of San Francisco, and Microsoft built a suburban campus in Redmond that O’Mara called “its own kind of bubble far away from the city.”

When Weber arrived in San Francisco in 1990 to cover Silicon Valley for the Los Angeles Times, he said, “there was essentially no tech in the city at all.” That changed with the dot-com boom, which brought the first backlash in San Francisco’s Mission District in the late 1990s.

In Seattle, a similar shift happened with Amazon’s move to South Lake Union, starting in 2010. John said Amazon was “most perfectly positioned” at its earlier headquarters on Beacon Hill, southeast of downtown Seattle, “completely isolated from the rest of the city.”

“When things really shifted for Amazon is when they decided to plant themselves in the middle of the city,” John said. “Then things accelerate, and then these problems start to come in, and Amazon starts to get blamed.”

The tech industry grew up in an era of low taxes and light regulation, and that’s baked into its business model.

O’Mara pointed to 1978, when California voters passed Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and “essentially starved localities of revenue,” she said. Personal computers and video games were taking off in that same era. “Silicon Valley’s kind of grown up in that world,” she said.

In Seattle, John said, Amazon’s view was that it was doing enough by bringing jobs to the city, while the city’s progressive leaders wanted more as prices rose. “Those two philosophies just collided in Seattle in real time,” he said.

Cities have limited leverage, Weber said. “A company can move two miles and avoid whatever taxes the city wants to impose.”

Seattle’s tech and business leaders, unhappy with the city’s political leadership, are organizing to fill the gap themselves.

Asked whether tech leaders think they’ve been getting good leadership from Seattle’s mayors, John said, “Short answer: No.” Businesses feel they’re paying a growing list of new taxes, he said, without seeing results on basics like potholes and clean streets.

In recent months, business figures including Microsoft’s Brad Smith, former Gov. Chris Gregoire and Joe Nguyen of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce have started forming coalitions and pooling their resources. “They’re going on offense,” John said. “They feel there’s a vacuum and a gap here based on this lack of political leadership.”

John said one of a mayor’s big jobs is to be “the chief cheerleader of the region and the city,” and Seattle’s recent mayors haven’t done it.

Weber said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has made that role a big part of his success: “Even though he’s a billionaire, he comes across as kind of a regular San Francisco guy.”

“That’s kind of a regular San Francisco guy these days,” O’Mara quipped.

San Francisco is the center of the AI boom, but Seattle and the Bay Area have always depended on each other more than they’ve competed.

Weber called San Francisco the undisputed capital of AI, as the home of OpenAI and Anthropic. The boom has brought so much wealth to the city, he said, that “there’s a mansion shortage.”

John said the gap between the two regions in venture funding for AI is “an astronomical difference.” But OpenAI and Anthropic have both opened engineering centers in the Seattle area, he said, hiring people who don’t want to leave.

Microsoft and Amazon both raised early money from Bay Area venture capitalists, O’Mara said.

John cited the longtime advice for Seattle founders: “Start your company and build your company in Seattle, raise your money in the Bay Area.” But Seattle has always run second to the Bay Area, John said, and that’s OK. “Who cares?” he said. “They are their own thing. We’re our own thing.”

The Gilded Age offers a precedent for putting guardrails on AI.

O’Mara compared the moment to the era of Carnegie and Rockefeller, when fast-growing industries overwhelmed a small U.S. government, and the regulation that followed still left room to make a lot of money.

Overemphasizing the novelty of AI, she said, “becomes a very convenient excuse not to regulate it.”

Weber said the AI debate is hard to read because most of the people in it are “talking their book,” with a business interest in the positions they take. The issue is arising, he said, at a time when “we essentially don’t have any national political leadership that’s able to deal with it.”

“So many things are indeed new,” O’Mara said, “but it doesn’t mean that nothing can be done.”

Both cities need to protect their quality of place, and tech itself can undermine it.

O’Mara said building a tech hub comes down to three things: capital, institutions such as research universities, and quality of place. Asked what Seattle and San Francisco should do differently over the next decade, she picked the third.

“This is not just making things nice for Amazon engineers getting paid $300,000 a year,” O’Mara said. “It is making the city safe, vital and fun.”

Weber said tech threatens that sense of place, because people who can shop, meet and find entertainment online don’t need the city in the same way. In San Francisco’s traditional nightlife districts, he said, there’s little going on after 9 p.m., while the city’s caterers and party planners are busy. “A lot of social life has moved indoors into private spaces,” he said.

To which John joked, “I just want to enjoy San Francisco in the metaverse.”

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Seattle’s economic engine is stalling, and downtown is taking the brunt of the hit.

Between 2024 and 2025, Seattle shed 18,065 total jobs, with a staggering 70% of those losses—13,000 jobs—coming directly from the city’s downtown core, according to a new report released by the Downtown Seattle Association.

In some ways, it’s a tale of two cities.

While Seattle proper shrank, neighboring Eastside tech hub Bellevue gained 5,375 jobs over the same timeframe, highlighting a shifting center of gravity within the Puget Sound region.

A lot of that growth in Bellevue, and decline in Seattle is coming from one company: Amazon.

The online retail and cloud computing powerhouse employed 15,700 workers in Bellevue at the end of 2025, making it the largest employer in Bellevue at 9.85% of the total workforce, according to the city’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. That’s up from just a few hundred employees in Bellevue nearly a decade ago.

Amazon employs about 49,000 people in Seattle proper, though the Puget Sound Business Journal noted this week that the company has shed office space in downtown Seattle and dramatically slowed employment in the city.

Other key findings from the Downtown Seattle Association report:

• Tech Leads the Drop: Seattle’s sharpest sector declines were concentrated in Information and Technology, Professional Services, and Construction.
• National Lag: Out of the top 30 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, the Puget Sound region ranked 20th in job growth between 2019 and 2025. Total regional nonfarm growth rose just 1.7% over six years, vastly underperforming peer markets like Austin (25.2%), Dallas/Fort Worth (14%), and Nashville (14%).
• Stagnant Commuter Foot Traffic: Inbound commuter visits to downtown Seattle remain stuck in the low 60% range compared to 2019 baselines, sliding 38% since the pandemic — a steeper loss than Bellevue (-21%), Austin (-23%), or Chicago (-32%).
• Intra-Region Tech Shift: While Seattle’s tech headcount dropped from its 2023 peak, Bellevue’s tech job totals surged upward between 2024 and 2025, regaining momentum.

The latest findings build on a growing chorus of criticism regarding the city’s fiscal climate. A June analysis by the DSA argued that Seattle’s controversial “JumpStart” payroll expense tax—passed in 2020 and targeting major employers like Amazon—is backfiring by driving business across Lake Washington.

The June report highlighted that since 2020, downtown Seattle lost roughly 30,000 jobs and saw office building values plummet 48%, while Bellevue—which levies no comparable head tax—gained jobs and expanded commercial values by 7%.

Though JumpStart projects $388 million in revenue this year, about 70% of that relies on just 10 major companies, underscoring how heavily Seattle leans on a handful of tech giants.

City of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has consistently pushed back against blaming downtown’s struggles on any single tax, pointing to broader post-pandemic remote-work trends, high interest rates and national tech restructurings that affect cities nationwide. She credited JumpStart with saving the city from drastic service cuts during the pandemic and noted that Seattle’s recovery remains resilient.

However, in a sign that Mayor Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns in the region, she last week proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget, which would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.

Citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector, the mayor’s freeze leaves the payroll tax untouched to offer big employers a period of tax stability, even as she continues directing JumpStart revenues beyond their original intent to cover core general fund operations.

“These were a set of taxes that may have provided some short-term gain to the city coffers, but are inflicting long-term pain,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes told GeekWire in an interview in June. “We predicted that at the time, and were sort of dismissed and ignored.” 

Seattle, take a bow. You’re officially trailing only New York, London, and Paris on the world stage.

The Emerald City landed at No. 4 overall in the newly released Oxford Economics Global Cities Index 2026, which scored 1,000 major urban centers across economics, human capital, quality of life, environment, and governance.

Seattle eclipsed San Francisco, Dublin, Boston, San Jose, Tokyo, and Zurich, Switzerland, to round out the top 10.

Much of the city’s global pull stems from an economics score that is fourth worldwide, fueled by a corporate ecosystem that features tech powerhouses Microsoft and Amazon alongside industrial titan Boeing and retail staples like Starbucks, Costco, and Nordstrom.

That heavy concentration of high-value employers gives Seattle the fourth-highest income per person in the world at $152,000 and underpins its human capital performance (top 10 nationally, top 50 globally).

In total, the 4.2 million-person metro area generated $632 billion in GDP in 2025.

The global accolades follow a blockbuster summer in which Seattle hosted six 2026 FIFA World Cup matches — generating $889 million in regional economic impact while offering a high-profile boost to a city navigating local friction over business taxes, housing and public safety policies, and the revival of downtown.

Beyond pure balance sheets, the report cites Seattle’s high quality of life (22nd globally, second in the U.S.), which relies heavily on a cultural footprint that spans the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Symphony, and Seattle Opera. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the city’s grunge roots even get a shout out.

The report also spotlighted physical urban additions like the newly completed 20-acre Waterfront Park along Elliott Bay — which replaced the former Alaskan Way Viaduct with expansive walkways, community piers, and dedicated bike lanes. Add in clean air, low emissions intensity, and quick access to Lake Washington and Puget Sound, and the city notched an environment rank of 28th.

The news wasn’t all glowing, however. Seattle tumbled to 198th in the governance category — a drag fueled by broader national political friction — while lower income equality, high housing costs, and elevated crime rates were flagged as ongoing vulnerabilities.

Oxford Economics also warned that potential shifts in federal immigration policy could crimp international talent inflows, posing a long-term risk to the region’s human capital growth.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson on Tuesday proposed a budget that closes the city’s inherited deficit largely through spending cuts and rules out new taxes on big business. That includes any increase to the JumpStart payroll tax she helped create, a decision that comes amid a rocky stretch for the region’s tech industry.

The $9.1 billion proposed 2027 budget, the first year of the city’s 2027–28 biennial plan, aims to erase a $175 million General Fund deficit without new progressive revenue.

Wilson’s plan cuts nearly $50 million a year in General Fund spending and eliminates 128 full-time positions, 15 of which are currently filled. It also continues using JumpStart revenue to prop up general city services, while keeping more than 30% of the tax’s annual revenue — about $140 million — dedicated to affordable housing.

Speaking at the Seattle Central Library on Tuesday, Wilson framed the decision as a response to economic conditions.

“We are watching seismic shifts in the tech sector, which anchors so much of our regional economy,” Wilson said. Raising additional progressive revenue presents high risks while downtown remains fragile, she added, noting that expanding taxes like JumpStart is “not the right move” right now.

The stance marks a notable turn for Wilson. Before taking office, she helped design and push for JumpStart as a community activist. As recently as July, she called raising the tax an option for closing the budget gap. On Tuesday, she acknowledged she is “continuing to direct JumpStart dollars beyond the programs it was originally intended for,” and said she aims to grow the tax’s housing share in future budgets.

Passed by the City Council in July 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, JumpStart was pitched as a way to fund affordable housing, climate initiatives, small business support, and equitable development. It applies to businesses with large Seattle payrolls and taxes the pay of employees earning roughly $194,000 or more, at rates ranging up to 2.55% depending on payroll size and salary levels.

Because of high salaries and equity-heavy compensation across major tech firms, the tax falls heavily on big tech. Just 10 top taxpayers, led by companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google, account for roughly 70% of JumpStart revenue.

JumpStart was designed with guardrails to protect spending on housing and community development, but it quickly became a lifeline for City Hall during post-pandemic revenue shortfalls. Under Wilson’s predecessors, the city routinely shifted roughly $200 million or more a year from the tax into the General Fund to patch structural deficits.

By holding rates steady, Wilson’s budget offers Seattle tech employers a period of tax stability amid growing friction over the city’s business climate. Business groups have long argued that heavy payroll taxes undermine Seattle’s competitiveness, pushing job growth and tech investment toward Eastside hubs like Bellevue and Redmond that don’t impose comparable payroll taxes.

That debate was reignited in June by a Downtown Seattle Association report examining the tax five years after its passage. The report tied JumpStart to the loss of about 30,000 downtown jobs and found that downtown Seattle office properties lost 48% of their assessed value between 2020 and 2025, while downtown Bellevue’s rose 7%.

While Wilson cautioned at the time against blaming downtown’s complex post-pandemic recovery on a single policy, her decision to hold JumpStart rates steady reflects her administration’s apparent willingness to listen to business concerns as City Hall works to revitalize the commercial core.

On Tuesday, DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes welcomed her budget, saying that not adding business taxes while employers face headwinds is “important and a helpful signal to the business community.”

Last week, during the launch of Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound, a new regional initiative brought together by Challenge Seattle to strengthen the area’s tech strategy, Microsoft President Brad Smith referred to the tax.

As structured, the payroll tax “is really a tax on tech jobs,” Smith said, “and that’s why you’re seeing more tech jobs move from Seattle to places like Bellevue and the Eastside.” He noted that San Francisco abolished its payroll tax the same year Seattle adopted one, in 2021.

“You should tax things you want to discourage, like cigarettes, not jobs,” Smith said at the time.

On Tuesday, Amazon offered its reaction to the mayor’s budget plan.

“We appreciate Mayor Wilson putting forward a budget that focuses on making use of existing resources,” an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire. “Like Mayor Wilson, we believe the city’s first priority should be making sure those resources are used effectively and deliver results for residents.”

Beyond payroll taxes, Wilson’s budget speech and recent executive actions touched on several tech-adjacent priorities:

Housing permitting acceleration: Following an executive order last month launching a Housing Production Task Force, the budget funds a new Affordable Housing Ombud position to help community developers navigate city permitting faster.

Algorithmic pricing transparency: The budget funds implementation of the city’s Fair and Transparent Pricing policy. The City Council was scheduled to take a final vote Tuesday on the ordinance, making Seattle the first city in the country to ban algorithmic price discrimination (also known as surveillance pricing) for groceries.

Economic diversification and AI exposure: The budget proposal follows an executive order Wilson signed earlier this month aimed at diversifying Seattle’s economy. A city-commissioned report warned that local employment is 42% more exposed to AI disruption than the national average, prompting the order’s call for targeted support to retain growing startups.

Green technology investments: The budget maintains JumpStart-funded Green New Deal programs, including building decarbonization, urban forest support, and clean energy apprenticeships.

With the proposed budget now formally submitted, the Seattle City Council begins a nine-week review process chaired by Councilmember Dan Strauss. Public hearings are scheduled for Oct. 6 and Nov. 5, and councilmembers have until Oct. 20 to submit proposed amendments before Strauss presents a revised balancing package in early November.

A final council vote to adopt the final budget is slated for Nov. 20.

Plug and Play Seattle selected 11 startups for the fourth batch of its accelerator program, bringing together a group of founders building everything from space-servicing robotic arms and data-center optical links to opioid-countering antibody therapeutics.

The 12-week program kicks off today and runs through mid-December. Ten of the participating startups are based in Seattle, joined by Tokyo-based wireless power developer Aeterlink, which is participating in an exploratory international track to support its expansion into the U.S. and Pacific Northwest.

Programming will mix virtual sessions with in-person work across Plug and Play Seattle’s regional hubs at the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs and the SNBL Global Gateway in Everett, Wash. The cohort will present their progress to investors and corporate partners at a Dec. 3 expo at the Boeing Future of Flight in Mukilteo.

“Seattle has the talent and research depth to build companies that shape entire industries,” said Jack Callaghan, director of Plug and Play Seattle, in a statement. “This cohort reflects that potential, from advancing drug discovery to building the infrastructure behind AI.”

Here are the 11 startups in Batch 4:

• Aeterlink (Tokyo): Develops wireless power systems that deliver electricity to devices without physical cables, targeting applications in industrial automation, buildings, and medical devices.
• Athanor AI (Seattle): Builds Kairos, a verification platform using mathematical proofs to validate AI-generated chip-design code.
• Coda AI (Seattle): Creates an AI-native vehicle diagnostics platform combining language models with deterministic computation to help automakers analyze vehicle data across cloud and onboard systems.
• CounterX Therapeutics (Seattle): Develops antibody therapeutics and vaccines designed to blunt the effects of opioids and help prevent accidental overdose in high-risk patients.
• DiffBio (Seattle): Bridges computational protein design with wet-lab testing via gene synthesis, cloning, and automated screening to help researchers evaluate designed protein functions.
• Mindmorphic (Seattle): Builds foundation models for brain signals that function across individuals, reducing the need for person-specific retraining in neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces.
• Orbital Robotics (Seattle): Builds AI-powered robotic arms for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing using vision-based control to capture objects without specialized docking hardware.
• Q-Immune (Seattle): Analyzes protein interactions in live cells to predict treatment toxicity and guide the creation of safer cell therapies.
• Raydx (Seattle): Develops silicon-photonics interconnects using optical links to replace copper connections, speeding up AI inference in data centers.
• Talus Bio (Seattle): Measures compound effects on hundreds of gene-regulating proteins inside live human cells to accelerate drug discovery for hard-to-drug targets.
• Thoron (Seattle): Manufactures U.S.-made enterprise drones paired with Commander, an AI-powered data-processing software platform.

Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play launched its Seattle presence in March 2025.

In addition to startup accelerators, Plug and Play runs corporate innovation programs and has an in-house venture capital fund that has backed companies such as including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi. 

Goldman Sachs is expanding its technology presence in the Seattle region, opening a new Bellevue engineering center that will accommodate more than 125 employees focused on artificial intelligence and cloud transformation.

The New York-based financial giant held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this month for the new office, its first dedicated space for engineers in the Pacific Northwest.

The Bellevue location adds to Goldman Sachs’ existing presence in downtown Seattle, where the company has maintained an office since 2001 for its banking and wealth management divisions.

“We are in a period of rapid technological change, but we know our people are still this firm’s greatest asset,” Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon said in a statement. “Hiring exceptional talent is central to how we adapt and grow.”

The move also puts Goldman Sachs in the company of a growing list of financial and technology companies that have established engineering operations in the Seattle area. GeekWire maintains a list of nearly 150 engineering hubs in the Seattle region here.

JPMorgan Chase established its Seattle Tech Center in 2018 and has steadily expanded it. The engineering hub has grown to about 400 employees and is now anchoring a new AI infrastructure team focused on controlling how the bank runs AI across its own data centers and outside cloud providers.

Goldman Sachs said its new Bellevue location comes amid growth at other facilities in Dallas, Salt Lake City and Warsaw. Earlier this month, the company hired Dinesh Keswani — a former Microsoft and GoDaddy engineering leader — to co-lead its core engineering team alongside Gopi Parameswaran. Keswani will also serve as chief technology officer of The Core Engineering. 

Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh each had their moment in the sun a century ago, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said Monday — and then the warning lights started flashing, and their leaders at the time failed to heed them.

“Well, here we are. It is 2026,” Smith said at a press conference, flanked by dozens of regional leaders, with the Seattle skyline behind them. “And the warning signs are flashing on our economy.”

Smith was speaking at the launch of the Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound, a Challenge Seattle initiative that brought together roughly 50 elected officials from King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties — two county executives, around 20 mayors, port commissioners and about a dozen state legislators — along with labor leaders and business executives, behind a 20-point plan for reversing the region’s slide.

The region lost nearly 7,000 jobs in 2025, according to a report issued by the group, the first time in two decades outside a recession or the pandemic that Seattle-area employment growth has trailed the nation’s. Washington has fallen from 32nd to 47th in CNBC’s ranking of states by cost of doing business since 2017.

An ‘intentional’ regional tech strategy: The report makes a pointed observation about technology: aerospace has a coordinated regional agenda and tech doesn’t, despite tech accounting for nearly one in 10 regional jobs and about 24% of total payroll.

Aerospace knows what it’s working on: the next airplane, the space industry, sustainable fuels, supplier diversification. Technology, “despite being one of Puget Sound’s defining economic anchors, does not yet have an equally intentional regional strategy,” the report says.

Without one, it adds, the region risks losing “jobs, technology investment, headquarters, talent, and company growth” to the Bay Area, New York, Boston and Austin. The goal is “not simply to promote growth, but to protect and strengthen the region’s position as a leading technology center.”

Challenge Seattle says it will write that strategy with the Puget Sound Regional Council, built around two priorities: keeping the big tech companies investing here, and making it easier for startups to scale. Related recommendations target industrial space for AI hardware startups, commercial space, and the region’s fusion cluster.

The report sets no budget or measure of success for the tech strategy, and no deadline beyond its general goal of progress within three years.

A regional wake-up call: Many of the recommendations are changes to how local government operates, not new spending: deadlines for permit decisions, a designated business contact in every city and county, and a strategy for dealing with the way taxes stack across state, county and city.

“This is, for us, a wake-up call,” said former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, CEO of Challenge Seattle, launching the initiative during the press conference. “We cannot resort to relying on yesterday’s success while tomorrow’s jobs go somewhere else.”

April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, said businesses need predictability and enough margin to invest, innovate and take risks — but “working people need margins, too.”

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said his office has hired an economic development team and is beginning an internal permitting audit. “AI is transforming our economy seemingly overnight,” he said, calling the 7,000 lost jobs “quite alarming.”

The group also released a playbook for Puget Sound mayors, drawn from interviews and surveys with local leaders, on building what it calls a culture of partnership with business.

Seattle as a Microsoft litmus test: Asked by GeekWire during the press conference what it would take for Microsoft to return and grow in Seattle proper, where it previously had offices in South Lake Union, Smith first pointed out that he was standing in front of Redmond Mayor Angela Birney.

“We have a great mayor, and every day we get up and we’re excited to go to work in Redmond, Washington,” he said, to laughter from the assembled officials.

Smith also pushed back on the premise: Microsoft moved to the Eastside from Albuquerque in 1979 and never had a large presence in Seattle, so he wouldn’t use the city as the point of comparison.

Then he turned to Seattle’s JumpStart payroll expense tax.

As structured, the payroll tax “is really a tax on tech jobs,” Smith said, “and that’s why you’re seeing more tech jobs move from Seattle to places like Bellevue and the Eastside.” He noted that San Francisco abolished its payroll tax the same year Seattle adopted one, in 2021.

“You should tax things you want to discourage, like cigarettes, not jobs,” he said.

He tied the issue to the larger impact of AI on jobs. “We need people to succeed to some degree in a world of AI,” Smith said. “And you don’t want to make the cost of employing people more expensive, at the same time that AI is increasingly adding its own new form of competition.”

“There’s nothing that would lead to the decline in jobs in this state faster than a replication of the JumpStart tax,” he said. “And if Seattle wanted to do one thing to increase jobs in Seattle, it ought to revisit whether a payroll tax makes any sense.”

Then he added a caveat: “That’s probably something that would impact other companies more than Microsoft.”

Amazon, which has been reported to be the largest payer of the tax, did not have a speaker at Monday’s event. Individual Amazon execs are listed in the acknowledgments in the Challenge Seattle report, though the report says participation doesn’t imply endorsement.

View from Olympia: During the press conference, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, was asked whether Washington risks becoming an outlier among states on taxes. The Legislature has been correcting course, he said, pointing to two moves from this year’s session.

One was the estate tax. Lawmakers raised the top rate to 35% in 2025, the highest in the country, and reversed themselves this March, returning it to 20% as of July.

The other was the millionaires tax — a 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson and projected to raise roughly $3 billion a year. It doesn’t take effect until 2028, and Seattle tech leaders warned it would push founders and investors out of the state.

Pedersen cast it as the fix for a different kind of outlier status: Washington’s business and sales taxes are high because it’s one of the few states with no personal income tax at all. The new tax would let Washington “join 41 other states that have a personal income tax,” he said.

Voters get the last word in November. Initiative 645, backed by Let’s Go Washington, qualified for the ballot in July and would repeal the tax. If it survives, Pedersen said, a statewide payroll tax is “vanishingly unlikely” next session.

Seattle’s mayor weighs in: Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who was an architect of the JumpStart tax before running for office, was not among the speakers at the press conference. She opened the regional session that followed, and said the region needs to do a better job telling its own story.

“There are some forces and interests that are pushing a narrative that does not want Seattle or our region to succeed,” Wilson said, “and we must counter that with a new commitment to a shared sense of destiny, because Seattle’s success is Bellevue’s success, Pierce County’s success is Snohomish County’s success.”

She called it a fragile moment and said the time to act is now, pointing to the economic actions she announced last week in conjunction with an independent report commissioned by the city and released by Seattle’s Office of Economic Development.

That report, “Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy,” found Seattle’s tax structure unique among peer cities in the way it “specifically penalizes the hiring of senior, high-compensation workers,” with the burden falling overwhelmingly on large tech employers.

Hiring a software engineer at $650,000 in total compensation costs about $17,000 more a year in Seattle than in Bellevue at JumpStart’s top rate, the researchers found.

The city report, conducted by the economic consulting firm Formation, said Seattle should bet on cleantech, the sector where the city owns the utility, writes the building codes and controls permitting and land use. It’s one place where Seattle has real leverage over its own economy, the researchers argued.

“It’s striking how much agreement we share across labor, businesses, and government,” Wilson said. “This is not a call to ignore our challenges, but to tackle them with a shared sense of possibility.”

She did not address the payroll tax in her remarks.