Oregon’s unemployment rate matched a record low in July, according to numbers released Wednesday by state officials. July’s 3.4% percent is the lowest the jobless rate in the state has been since the end of 2019, and before the pandemic shot the unemployment rate into double digit territory.
State labor economists tracked the slow and steady improvement of the job market over the last several months, as it quickly and then steadily improved from the start of COVID-19 restrictions in March 2020 over a two-year period ending last March. The jobless rate ticked up to a high of 4.8% in December 2022, only to fall steadily again through the first seven months of 2023.
Oregon is seeing strong job gains in a number of sectors. State officials say three areas in particular — health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, and government — are responsible for almost all of the state’s net job growth. The health care sector added 3,400 jobs in July, part of a yearlong trend in which that area of employment has amassed almost 14,000 new jobs.
“We’re seeing ongoing job growth and really low unemployment in Oregon,” said Gail Krumenauer, an economist with the Oregon Employment Department. “Non-farm payroll gains have strengthened again in Oregon, and at 3.4 percent, Oregon’s unemployment rate is back at its record low.”
While leisure and hospitality has consistently added jobs, and is one of three sectors that labor economists point to as driving Oregon’s job gains, it still hasn’t entirely recovered from the mass shedding of restaurant and hotel jobs that occurred in spring 2020. According to OED’s figures, leisure and hospitality lost 52% of its payroll in two months, from February to April 2020.
In an essay posted to the OED website, regional economist Guy Tauer analyzed how the pandemic “disproportionately impacted this sector of the economy” in spring 2020.
“Now about three years into the employment recovery from the depths of the Pandemic Recession,” Tauer wrote, “the leisure and hospitality sector has recovered 90.5% of the jobs lost, while overall employment has regained 13,200 more jobs than were lost to the pandemic.”
Oregon’s improving job picture is consistent with what’s happening generally across the country. The national unemployment rate of 3.5% is nearly identical to Oregon’s of 3.4%.
Copyright 2023 Oregon Public Broadcasting.