The Seattle Public Employment Office opened in 1894, serving many men who had come west during the panic of 1893 to seek a living. It was the first office of its kind in the nation. During the Great Depression, unemployed men in Seattle were able to find employment on WPA-funded projects like paving streets, and improving city parks, Boeing field, and the University of Washington. Women went to work sewing garments for the needy and serving food to schoolchildren. Jobs for men and women were posted separately at the men’s Public Employment Office at 77 Washington Street, and the women’s office in the County-City building.

This photograph shows men looking at job listings in the window of the Public Employment Office, Men's Division, at 77 Washington Street.

Caption information source:"First in the Nation," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 15, 1940, p. 12.
Caption information source: “Seattle during the Great Depression” by Levi Pulkkinen, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 17, 2015, retrieved at https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/Seattle-during-the-Great-Depression-6139430.php#photo-7670042