Pierce County's unemployment rate edged up in February to 5.6 percent from 5.3 percent the previous month.

"It's not a big move up, I think it's significant nonetheless," said Paul Turek, Tacoma's regional economist with the state's Employment Security Department.

Turek noted that the unemployment rate might be one more indication of a slowing economy. The rate is four-tenths of a percentage point higher this February than it was in the same month last year.

Pierce County's unemployment is higher than the neighboring counties of Kitsap, King and Thurston, but lower than most counties in Central and Eastern Washington.

Pierce County is still generating jobs – adding 2,100 over the month and 5,800 over the year. But fewer jobs were added over the month this year, than in the same time period last year.

The unemployment and job figures aren't adjusted for seasonal employment changes such as holiday hiring or the predictable slow down of construction work in the winter.

Accounting for such factors, the seasonally adjusted figures actually show a more significant slowing of job growth, revealing 500 new jobs in Pierce County over the month compared to 1,700 added last year at this time.

The state employment rate for February inched up to 5.4 percent from 5.2 percent in January and 5.3 percent last year. The seasonally adjusted rate of 4.5 percent matched the previous month and remained near a record low.

Gov. Chris Gregoire touted the low unemployment and noted that Washington continues to out pace the country in job growth.

Union airline pilots leafleted passengers at Sea-Tac Airport today hoping to gain public sympathy for their ongoing negotiations with Alaska Airlines.

The leaflet distribution came on the same day a new Alaska competitor, Virgin America, began service from Seattle to San Francisco.

"The pilot group is concerned because our management seems to be relying heavily on its employees to fight the new competitive threats we're facing," said Sean Cassidy, vice chairman of the Alaska Airline Pilots Association.

The pilots and the airline have been negotiating for nearly 15 months over the terms of a new contract. An arbitrator three years ago cut pilot wages to make the air carrier more competitive with its rivals, many of which had chopped salaries by declaring bankruptcy.

High fuel costs may force SeaTac's Horizon Air to begin retiring some of its regional jet fleet, the chairman of Horizon's parent company told analysts today.

Horizon, unlike many regional airlines, didn't go all-jet a few years ago when smaller jets were the trend in the business. And it canceled orders for new jets from Canadian manufacturer Bombardier and ordered new more efficient turboprop Q400 aircraft instead two years ago.

Bill Ayer, Alaska Air Group chairman, speaking at a JP Morgan analysts' conference in New York today, said Horizon may cut some of its fleet of 20 regional jets and fly the former jet routes with Q400 turpoprops. Alaska Air Group is the parent company of Horizon Air and Alaska Airlines.

Alaska is also considering contracting with another airline with somewhat larger regional jets to fly some of its jet routes.

According to figures Ayer showed analysts, Horizon's CRJ700 jets use 7.1 gallons per passenger on a 400-mile trip compared with 5.8 gallons per passenger for a Q400.

A 90-seat CRJ900 would use 6.2 gallons per passenger on the same trip. Horizon's CRJ700s hold 70 passengers.

When oil is selling for $110 a barrel, airlines are destined to lose money no matter what their present costs and fares are, Ayer said.

The increasing price of fuel -- oil has risen $25 a barrel in 25 days -- is almost sure to turn what was predicted to be a profitable year for the airline industry into an unprofitable one, he said.

SeaTac's Alaska Air Group is becoming the first passenger airline in the country to implement a freight tracking system for packages shipped on its subsidiaries, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air.

The system, similar to one that the big parcel shipment companies such as UPS and FedEx use, will allow customers to pinpoint the location of their freight and its projected arrival times.

The airlines have implemented arrival scanning at 80 percent of their cargo service locations and will have the full capability by May, the airlines said.

An Indian newspaper, the Financial Express, reports today that Boeing is the likely winner of a $2 billion contract to build eight naval patrol aircraft for India.

Those aircraft, called P8i Poseidons, are modified versions of Boeing's versatile 737.

They will be built on a special assembly line at Boeing's Renton plant.

The Indian aircraft are a derivative of the P-8As Boeing is building for the U.S. Navy.

Boeing was competing with Airbus and its militarized A-319 and with Lockheed Martin with its updated version of the turboprop P3C Orion aircraft.

The aircraft will replace Soviet TU-142Ms, the paper said.

Raise a toast to Rusty George Creative, the spunky, growing, community-minded advertising and graphic design company headquartered in downtown Tacoma.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced this morning that it has selected the company's two principals – Rusty George and De Meyers – as its 2008 Washington Small Business Persons of the Year.

I first profiled the company in 2003. Since then Rusty George Creative has amassed a client list that reads like a who's who of the South Sound – Russell Investments, Tacoma Art Museum, TAPCO, Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center, Point Defiance Zoo, Northwest Trek, Click! Network, Sterling Communications, Washington State History Museum.

The company doesn't take its last name – Creative – for granted. As part of its own branding strategy, the company has come up with a series of monthly Weird Holiday celebrations.

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I guess not enough of you are buying premium drinks at your local Starbucks.

Now there's speculation that CEO Howard Schultz may start offering free drinks to customers as part of a loyalty program to stanch declining U.S. sales. The plan may be announced at the company's annual meeting with shareholders on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reports.

Schultz will probably offer free coffees or discounts to customers using prepaid Starbucks Cards to entice the chain’s most frequent customers to visit more and avoid competitors led by McDonald’s Corp., said Joseph Buckley, an analyst at Bear Stearns & Co. who recommends holding the stock.

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We didn't have room in today’s paper for this story from the Associated Press, but I thought it had an interesting premise.

In case you’re thinking of panicking over this whole Bear Stearns thing, don’t. It has little to do with the real world of people who use banks.

“The average guy on the street has nothing to worry about,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “There should be no panic whatsoever.”

Individual bank accounts at a single institution are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. up to $100,000, including checking and savings accounts, trusts, and IRAs or certificates of deposit. Some retirement accounts are insured up to $250,000.

Also, commercial banks would have to fall far before they match the 1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years. By contrast, only three U.S. banks failed last year, and none failed the previous two years, according to the FDIC.

Last year, the FDIC was monitoring only 76 “problem institutions,” down from 1,430 in 1991.

But say the regulators are wrong and scores of banks begin to fail. How will the FDIC possibly cover all of them? As of December, the FDIC was covering $4.3 trillion in insured deposits with a fund of $52.4 billion, for a reserve ratio of 1.22 percent – and the institution is asking banks to increase to 1.25 percent.