Looking for labor? You're not alone, according to this week's state unemployment update. In Yakima, the jobless rate is down around historic low levels, the Yakima Herald-Republic reports, and in the Tri-Cities, businesses are expected to continue hiring into the fall, even though the unemployment rate's down around 4.8 percent, according to the Tri-City Herald.

The Tri-Cities in particular seems to be booming. Dean Schau - the state's most-quotable labor analyst - told the Herald that warehousing and distribution companies that have been squeezed out of Puget Sound are growing in the Tri-Cities. In addition, there's strong demand for construction workers for projects at Hanford and the Coyote Ridge prison. Even the financial services sector is strong, as people with steady paychecks move to take advantage of affordable housing in the area, creating a demand for mortgages - subprime meltdown notwithstanding.

(Driving through the Tri-Cities last week, I saw billboards advertising starter homes in new subdivisions for between $106,000 and $114,000. Can't afford to buy a home in Bothell, Bellevue or Belltown? Go east, young man. Go east.)

THE LOW JOBLESS RATE has implications throughout the region. For starters, it's hard to find apple pickers, reports the Wenatchee World. There were openings for 800 workers this week in Okanagon County, the paper said, and for some, the shortage is clearly a crisis.

One grower who normally would have hired 35 pickers by now only has six. He told the World he has enough ripe fruit to fill 2,700 bins, but "I won't get them all off. Not with six pickers." And if if doesn't get the fruit off in a timely fashion, it's likely he'll default on his bank loans, the grower added.

Compounding the shortage are higher gas prices and a Bush administration move to crack down on illegal immigrants, which growers say has had a chilling affect on all migrant labor.

The shortage is spurring efforts to develop mechanical harvesters. The World reported this week on a Quincy-area orchard that is experimenting with a Dutch-built machine platform that pickers ride on. So far, the machine appears to be 10 to 15 percent more efficient, and if labor shortages continue, more growers will opt for them, orchard manager Noel Adkins predicted.

THE TIGHT LABOR MARKET also seems to be pushing down enrollment at Central Washington University, the Ellensburg Daily Record reports. Freshman enrollment is up, but overall enrollment at CWU's main campus in Ellensburg is down, a fact officials attribute to the strong regional job market.

Central, you Wet-siders may be suprised to know, has branch campuses in Des Moines, Edmonds and Lynnwood, as well as Moses Lake, Wenatchee and Yakima. Overall branch campus enrollment is 1,674 this fall, up 10 from last year.

IN SPOKANE, drivers are cheering a new report that shows the Lilac City has some of the least-congested roads in the country. If you're a Spokesman-Review subscriber, you can read about it here; the rest of us will have to make due with this report from the Associated Press.

Spokane-area Telecom equipment manufacturer WorldWide Packet in particular is happy, after raising an additional $10 million in venture capital funding. And a company called Ultimate Truck and Auto Accessories is taking advantage of the light traffic to drive over to Idaho, opening a new plant in Sandpoint where it will make . . . mud flaps. (Yeah, go ahead and laugh, you city snobs.) Ultimate will continue to make car covers, floor mats and other accessories in Spokane.

YAKIMA FOOTBALL FANS will have to hold out a little longer. The Herald-Republic reports that backers of a proposed AF2 indoor football team missed a key deadline, so their team won't start start play until 2009.

Meanwhile, in wine news, a Yakima Valley farming family has executed a $12.4 million sale-and-lease-back agreement with a California-based investment trust.

AND IN WALLA WALLA, locals told me last week there's still a bit of a buzz over the recent visit of former Mariners Jamie Moyer and Edgar Martinez, who flew into Walla Walla Regional Airport with their wives for a private lunch at Dunham Cellars winery.

If you haven't been there lately, the Port of Walla Walla-owned airport has become its own wine destination. The airport is an old World War II training base and the port now leases the old hangers and other base buildings to (at latest count) 15 wineries, most of them within easy walking distance from the new airport terminal. Esquire magazine also visted the industrial park recently, and declared this "Walla Walla wine ghetto" No. 98 on its list of the 100 coolest new trends for 2007.