The pandemic may have disrupted hiring patterns in tech, and pushed some workers out of coastal metro areas.
But Google still is growing fast in Washington state, according to a new economic analysis released by the search giant today.
According to the report, Google now employs more than 7,200 full time workers in Washington state, most of whom are based in engineering centers in Seattle and Kirkland.
Just prior to the pandemic when Google opened its South Lake Union cloud engineering building, the company employed more than 4,500 people in the Seattle area. And last year in a similar report the company indicated it had 6,300 full-time workers in the state.
Last month, Google implemented a new hybrid work model for most its Seattle and Kirkland employees to report to the offices three days a week.
The numbers are part of a larger U.S. economic impact analysis released by Google in which the company said it has invested $37 billion in offices and data centers in the past five years across 26 states. It has added 40,000 full-time workers during that span, and announced plans to create at least 12,000 new jobs this year.
Google was one of the first Silicon Valley tech giants to set up an engineering hub in the Seattle area, mining the rich technical talent from nearby companies such as Expedia, Microsoft and Amazon. It established its tech hub in the region in Kirkland in 2004, and now there are more than 100 engineering centers in the Seattle area — operated by tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce.
Google said in its report that its presence helps provide $32.88 billion in economic activity in Washington state. Google’s Seattle area campus is the company’s second largest engineering center outside of the San Francisco Vay Area.
The company employed 156,500 employees at the end of 2021.
UPDATE: Google plans to officially open the first phase of its Kirkland Urban Campus project Thursday with remarks from Gov. Jay Inslee and Rep. Suzan DelBene. The new campus will add 760,000 square feet of additional space to the company’s footprint in the Seattle region.
