The Seattle metropolitan area is home to a large tech industry and is the headquarters of several major companies, including Microsoft and Amazon.

[17] Snohomish County had protested its inclusion and had sought a separate metropolitan area designation centered on Everett, which did not meet the population threshold of 50,000 residents.

[33][35] To the west of the metropolitan area is Puget Sound, which forms the second-largest saltwater estuary in the United States and is part of the Salish Sea.

[40] The Puget Sound region has approximately 83,705 U.S. Department of Defense personnel, including active duty members of the military and civilian workers at United States Armed Forces bases.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos both held the title of world's richest person, as determined by Forbes, while living in the Eastside city of Medina.

[80] Approximately 57 percent of the homeless population counted by HUD in King County was classified as unsheltered, either living in vehicles, encampments in public spaces, or other places.

[84] The regional authority's five-year plan, released in 2023, estimates that $8 billion in capital costs would be required to build and staff 18,205 new units of temporary and transitional housing to address the homelessness crisis.

[110] The company has major commercial jetliner assembly plants in Everett and Renton alongside testing facilities in Seattle and smaller component manufacturers in other areas.

[114] The decade also saw the establishment of several space technology companies in the area, including Kent-based Blue Origin, Vulcan Aerospace, Kuiper Systems, and satellite offices for SpaceX;[115][116] the industry has 13,000 jobs in the Puget Sound region as of 2022[update], a two-fold increase since 2018.

[122] Other maritime industries in the area include shipbuilding and commercial fishing,[32] particularly boat fleets based in Seattle that travel annually to the northern Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea near Alaska.

[126] The city proper serves as the headquarters for other major companies in various industries, including online travel agency Expedia and wood producer Weyerhaeuser.

[145] Its largest annual events include PAX West (formerly the Penny Arcade Expo), Emerald City Comic Con, Sakura-Con, and the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, which each attract over 10,000 attendees.

[149] Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the county's largest tourist attraction was the Future of Flight Aviation Center adjacent to Paine Field, which offered tours of the nearby Boeing Everett Factory and drew 300,000 annual visitors.

[154] Approximately 71 percent of Puget Sound region residents live in an incorporated city or town; the rest are in unincorporated areas under the direct jurisdiction of counties, which act as the local government.

[162][163] The county governments are responsible for various duties for all residents that are generally delegated to other elected and appointed officials, including the assessor, clerk, coroner and medical examiner, prosecuting attorney, and treasurer.

[164] These duties include organization of elections and voter registration, enforcement of land use regulations, management of vital records, property assessment, tax collection, public health, and building inspections.

[155][167] It maintains a long-range plan for population growth, economic development, and regional transportation that is overseen by an executive board and general assembly of all members.

[217] All major national television networks have affiliates in the region who also produce local news broadcasts and other programming;[218] these include KOMO 4 (ABC), KING 5 (NBC), KIRO 7 (CBS), and KCPQ 13 (Fox).

[221] The region's largest Spanish-language television station, KUNS, lost its Univision affiliation in 2023 and was replaced by Bellingham-based KVOS, which did not produce local news content.

[242] Real Change, a weekly street newspaper, has been published since 1994 and is sold by homeless and low-income vendors with an estimated annual circulation of 550,000 copies.

[265] The 1976 opening of the Kingdome, an indoor multi-purpose stadium funded by the King County government, provided a suitable home for several new professional teams.

[270] The Minor League Baseball system includes two teams in the region, the Tacoma Rainiers (Triple-A) and Everett AquaSox (High-A), that play in suburban ballparks and are affiliated with the Mariners.

[284][285] Other major healthcare systems in the Seattle area include EvergreenHealth, MultiCare, Overlake Hospital Medical Center, and Virginia Mason Franciscan Health.

[292] According to a 2022 estimate by the United States Census Bureau, approximately 5.3 percent of people in the Seattle metropolitan area lack health insurance.

[332][333] These freeways were built by the state government in the 20th century to conform with standards set by the Federal Highway Administration and are numbered as part of a national scheme.

The Cascades serves the Portland–Seattle–Vancouver corridor with multiple trips per day; the Coast Starlight operates daily service to Oregon and California from King Street Station in Seattle; and the Empire Builder connects the region to Eastern Washington and Chicago.

[358][360] Sound Transit's major capital projects are funded by several sources, including property taxes and fees on motor-vehicle registrations, that are enabled by ballot initiatives approved by voters in 1996, 2008, and 2016.

[378] Kitsap Transit launched the system's first route, Seattle–Bremerton, in 2017 to provide a faster alternative to the existing state ferry run; it expanded using a fleet of catamarans designed for low wakes.

[416][417] Puget Sound Energy provides natural gas to approximately 850,000 residents in the three metropolitan counties but has announced plans to transition to electric heating under new state regulations.

[390][418] Natural gas, primarily sourced from Canada and the Mountain states,[419] and petroleum are transported through a series of pipelines that travel along the Interstate 5 corridor in Western Washington.