Seattle Downtown Office Vacancy Hits 35.6% as Metro Loses 13,000 Jobs in 2025

1 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jul 27

35.6% of downtown Seattle office space sat vacant in Q4 2025, up from 32.3% a year earlier, extending a slide that some brokers had already pegged near 39.1% in late 2024.
A 35% drop in Seattle-area job postings between February 2020 and October 2025 helped drive that weakness, with tech layoffs at Microsoft, Amazon and Blue Origin feeding the pullback in leasing and hiring.
13,000 net jobs disappeared across the region in 2025, reversing the roughly 40,000 annual gains Seattle posted during its tech-boom peak.
$20.76-an-hour minimum pay, applied to all employers since January 2025, added pressure on small businesses as studies cited in the report found weaker business formation in Seattle and growth shifting to nearby suburbs.
CoStar estimates Seattle may not fully exit the office-vacancy cycle before 2027, underscoring how remote work, layoffs and policy costs have reinforced the downtown downturn.