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 

Seattle’s tax collections have nearly tripled over the past decade, soaring from $900 million in 2013 to a projected $2.8 billion in 2026. But who pays those taxes, and how the tax revenue is collected, looks vastly different today than a decade ago.

A new report released by ECOnorthwest, commissioned jointly by the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, show city tax revenues far outstripping population and job growth, driven by targeted corporate taxes on a small pool of major employers.

Between 2013 and 2025, Seattle’s tax revenues jumped 172%, outpacing population growth (31%), job growth (23%), and local inflation (50%). During that period, real tax growth grew 5.6 times faster than population and 7.5 times faster than employment.

The findings come as city leaders, major tech employers and regional business groups grapple with shifting post-pandemic work patterns and a political climate that has frequently placed large technology companies like Amazon in its sights.

According to the report, broad-based core taxes, such as property, sales, utility, and general Business & Occupation (B&O) taxes, comprised 83% of city tax collections in 2013. By 2026, those core broad taxes are projected to drop to just 52% of the total revenue.

Replacing them are narrow, targeted tax levies:

• The JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax (2021): Paid by fewer than 500 companies, with the top 10 taxpayers footing 73% of the total bill.
• The Social Housing Tax (2025): Paid by roughly 220 entities, with its top 10 taxpayers covering 66%.

Combined, two taxes that did not exist five years ago now account for nearly a third of all business tax dollars collected by the city. Overlap among top taxpayers means fewer than 20 companies account for roughly $356 million in annual City of Seattle revenue.

“Seattle’s tax collections are growing far faster than its population, jobs or inflation. Employers are carrying more of that burden. That trajectory is not sustainable,” said Seattle Metro Chamber president & CEO Joe Nguyen. “The question cannot always be how to collect more money. It must be how to deliver better results with the money we already have and build a tax structure that helps our economy grow.”

The heavy pivot to business revenue coincides with divergent employment trends between Seattle and its neighboring Eastside hubs.

Between March 2020 and March 2025, Seattle lost approximately 24,000 jobs, while the remainder of King County added 21,000. The report notes that Seattle lost 18,000 jobs in the single year leading up to March 2025 alone. And that figure that does not yet capture the full impact of major remote work policies and tech layoffs announced across the region.

The report arrives on the heels of previous GeekWire coverage tracking regional tech dynamics, including the shift of high tech jobs from Seattle to Bellevue, as well as broader political shifts in how West Coast hubs are responding to tech sector backlash and the AI boom.

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

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.”