1 In 4 Washington Employers Now Considering Leaving — And The Mayor Just Changed Her Tune

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In April, Seattle's mayor waved goodbye to the wealthy. By May, the largest business association in the state was calling the economy a 911 emergency. That's six weeks, same city. Let me show you what happened in between. April 14th, 2026, a forum at Seattle University. Mayor Katie Wilson is asked directly whether she's worried that wealthy residents and businesses will leave over Washington's new taxes. Her answer, the fears are super overblown and, quote, the ones that leave like, bye. She waves, the crowd laughs, now jump to early May. The Association of Washington Business, the state's chamber of commerce representing employers across Washington, releases its spring survey of more than 400 businesses and its president, Chris Johnson, doesn't reach for cautious trade group language. He calls the results, quote, a 911 emergency for our state's economy. And in that same stretch, the man who built Starbucks in Seattle, Howard Schultz, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal naming the mayor directly, writing that she's chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Here's the part the headlines didn't connect. By the time the survey landed and the op-ed ran, the mayor's tone had quietly changed. The buy became, I want to work with Starbucks. The wave became, there's room to find common ground. Something between April and May made the most confident voice in the room start looking for the door marked partnership. And the something was a number. This is the ground report. We read the documents and we follow the money. And we're going to do this one without the cheap shots because the data doesn't need them. So here's the honest question. Did the mayor's buy actually trigger an exodus? And I'm going to be straight with you up front? Oh, no, not yet. What the survey measures isn't companies that have left. It's something earlier and in a way more revealing what they're planning. And there's one comparison buried in that survey, two numbers side by side, that tells you more about where Seattle and Washington are heading than any single closure could. It's the clearest forward-looking signal we found. I'll give you the full picture. including the part that complicates the alarm because the head of the very group sounding the alarm admitted something important about these numbers. Subscribe because this isn't just Seattle. It's the test case for what happens when a government and its tax base stop trusting each other. Let's get into it. Start with the buy because it's the thing everything else reacted to. Katie Wilson won the closest Seattle mayor's race in over a century running as a democratic socialist and hours after winning she joined a Starbucks barista picket line and urged the city not to buy Starbucks. So when she stood at that April forum and called millionaire flight fears super overblown and waved goodbye to the ones who leave it wasn't a slip. It was consistent with how she'd campaigned but watch what happened after. This is the part the outrage coverage rushes past and it's actually the most telling. First, the pushback wasn't just from the right. Howard Schultz Starbucks founder hardly a fringe figure used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to say the mayor casts business as a foil rather than a partner and that her rhetoric vilifies employers even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. And a Seattle City Council member Rob Saka broke with the mayor's tone saying policymakers should avoid diminishing and trivializing the perspectives of the business community. That's a member of her own city council not an opponent. And then the mayor moved. Facing the heat Wilson said she'd actually like to work with Starbucks and that there's plenty of room for all of us to find common ground and that she wants the company to keep succeeding on shared priorities like homelessness public safety and affordability. Sit with that shift. April the ones that leave like bye weeks later there's room to find common ground. That's not a small rhetorical adjustment. That's the difference between treating the tax base as disposable and treating it as something you need to keep. The question is what moved her? And the answer showed up in a survey. Here's what landed in early May. The Association of Washington Business the state's main employer group ran its quarterly survey. 407 businesses across Washington collected in mid-April. and the numbers describe a collapse not in the economy yet but in confidence. Walk through them because the trend line is the story. Businesses considering leaving Washington 24% nearly 1 in 4 up from 17% the prior quarter and nearly triple what the same survey found just 16 months earlier. AWB Spring 2026 business owners considering moving their personal residents out of state 55% up from 44% a quarter before and near the Idaho border in Spokane County that number hits 67% 2 out of 3 AWB confidence in the state economy just 7% rated strong or very strong down 16 points in 16 months. 72% now rank the state's tax burden as a top business challenge up 18 points over the same period. AWB That's the trajectory that made the association's president Chris Johnson call it a 9-1-1 emergency for our state's economy And he named the cause directly Sentiment has worsened across nearly every indicator since lawmakers passed a record 9.4 billion dollars in new taxes in 2025 then followed up by passing the new income tax billed as hitting millionaires but as the AWB notes also reaching small and mid-sized businesses structured as pass-throughs AWB Now layer the survey on top of what we've already documented on this channel because the survey isn't happening in a vacuum Starbucks moved its headquarters expansion and 2,000 jobs to Nashville and laid off corporate workers in Seattle Amazon shifted roughly 10,000 jobs east to Bellevue Fisher investments left for Texas Boeing's gravity moved years ago Schultz himself moved to Florida The survey is the forward-looking version of all that not just who already left but who's now drawing up plans to and that's what makes the mayor's pivot make sense you can wave off a comment you cannot easily wave off your state's chamber of commerce calling the economy a 9-1-1 emergency in the same month the founder of your city's most famous company calls you out by name in the Wall Street Journal the buy met the data the data won so out of all those survey figures here's the one comparison that matters most because it's not about the past it's about the next decade 9% versus 38% only 9% of the businesses surveyed plan to expand in Washington over the next year meanwhile 38% say they're more likely to expand in another state puttish on AWB sit with that gap because it's the whole game a year and a half earlier 20% planned to expand in Washington now it's 9% less than half and the share looking to grow elsewhere nearly doubled AWB here's why that's the most important number in the survey more than the 24% considering leaving companies rarely pack up and leave overnight that's expensive disruptive slow what they do instead is quieter and more consequential they stop growing where they are and they put the new jobs the new facilities the new investment somewhere else that's exactly the Amazon to Bellevue pattern we documented Seattle kept the old buildings Bellevue got the growth the 9% versus 38% gap is that pattern measured across the whole state before it shows up in a single moving truck it's the sound of a tax base deciding not to leave exactly just to build its future elsewhere and a city funded by growth it's no longer getting is a city with a math problem that compounds every year now the honest counter case and on this one it's essential because the alarm can be oversold and the man sounding it said so himself first and most important these are intentions not departures a WB's own president Chris Johnson said it plainly will all these people follow through and actually move probably not the largest share is just beginning to explore options a WB slash 425 business 24% are considering leaving but only 7% have secured a location elsewhere and 3% are actually relocating the economy has not fallen apart sentiment has cratered and intentions have shifted which is a serious early warning signal but it is not a collapse and anyone selling you Seattle's economy is over is overstating what this data shows we won't second the survey comes from a business lobby the AWB's job is to advocate for lower taxes and lighter regulation on employers that doesn't make its numbers wrong 407 responses is a real sample and the trend across quarters is consistent but it means the framing is naturally tilted toward taxes are the problem health care costs 65% regulations 58% and fuel 53% also ranked high even tariffs are hitting 56% of respondents taxes are the top concern but they're not the only one and a fair reading says so AWB third the case for the taxes is real the income tax and capital gains tax fund schools child care and services [00:11:34] Speaker ?: and services [00:11:34] Speaker 1: in a state whose old system leaned hard on regressive sales taxes Wilson and the legislature would argue legitimately that asking the wealthiest to contribute more is both fair and popular you can believe that and read the survey as a genuine warning all fair here's what survives even discounting the lobby framing even granting that most of these companies won't actually move even crediting the taxes as good policy you're left with a tax base whose confidence has fallen by half in 16 months and whose growth plans are pointing out of state by a 4 to 1 margin that's not a 5 alarm fire today it's the smoke detector going off and the honest critique of the mayor isn't you destroyed the economy she didn't and the data doesn't say she did it's narrower and harder to dismiss when your own chamber of commerce calls it a 9-1-1 emergency the responsible move is the partnership tone she eventually reached for in May not the wave she led with in April she got there the question is whether the months of buy cost something on the way so the number not the 24% considering leaving that's the headline the real one is the gap 9% versus 38% 9% of Washington employers plan to grow here next year 38% plan to grow somewhere else AWB that 4 to 1 ratio is the quiet tell because it's not a threat or a tantrum it's a budget it's where the next decade of jobs and investment is being penciled in and for most of these companies the pencil is pointing at another state here's why it matters more than any single departure a city's budget doesn't actually run on the companies that are here it runs on the companies that are growing here because growth is what expands the tax base faster than the obligations expand when growth leaves the existing base stays flat while costs keep rising and the gap gets filled the only two ways it can higher taxes on whoever remains or cuts to services both of which the survey suggests push the next tier of employers toward that 38% column that's the loop the 9% versus 38% gap is the loop caught on camera before it finishes running and that's what the mayor seems to have understood between April and May you can say buy to the people leaving you cannot say buy to your own growth rate the wave was aimed at the wealthy the number it actually hit was the city's future tax base so come back to the two moments six weeks apart in April the mayor waved goodbye to the wealthy and called the worry overblown by May the state's largest employer group was calling the economy a 911 emergency the founder of Starbucks was naming her in the Wall Street Journal and her own tone had shifted from buy to let's find common ground the confidence of April met the data of May and the data changed the conversation here's the bottom line and it's the one this channel keeps arriving at the most dangerous moment for a city isn't when businesses leave it's the quiet stretch before when they simply decide to grow somewhere else and don't announce it by the time the moving trucks show up the decision was made quarters earlier in surveys like this one in the gap between 9% and 38% Seattle's economy hasn't fallen apart that's the honest truth and it's also the warning the alarm is going off before the fire which is exactly when it's still possible to do something about it the mayor reaching for partnership in May instead of dismissal is maybe the first sign someone heard the alarm but the people who will pay if no one acts on it aren't the executives drawing up expansion plans for Texas and Tennessee they never are it's the workers whose raises don't come because the company grew in Nashville instead the young people who don't get the job that got created in Bellevue the residents who absorb the higher taxes or the cut services when the growth that was supposed to fund them went out of state the wave was free the number it hit has a bill attached and it comes due quietly a year at a time in a budget gap that started as a survey nobody wanted to read the mayor stopped laughing somewhere around May the real question is whether the city stops the loop before the 38% becomes a moving truck I want to hear from you especially if you run a business in Washington or you're one of the 55% thinking about leaving is this a real warning the state needs to act on or a business lobby talking its book and to everyone is your state in the 9% column or the 38% column right now drop it below the comments on these videos have been better sourced than half the coverage if this connected dots for you hit like one second real difference subscribe and ring the bell because the next AWB survey lands in a few months and the real test is whether that 24% starts turning into moving trucks we'll read it the day it drops this is the ground report we read the documents we follow the money we show you the score I'll see you in the next one