Oregon’s unemployment rate has held steady at 5.2% for the first four months of 2026.
And going back even further, the rate hasn’t been more than a tenth of a percentage point higher or lower than that since it was 5.0% in March 2025.
On top of that, the number of jobs in Oregon has held relatively steady for more than a year. The difference in the number of jobs in the state between March 2025 to April 2026 is 10,900 jobs, a reduction of 0.55%
So why does Oregon’s economy seem to be in a holding pattern?
[The unemployment rate] has really just been moving sideways,” said Oregon Employment Economist Gail Krumenauer. “We haven’t seen any sort of seasonal change, and that does to us suggest some wait-and-see behavior because there’s been some greater uncertainty around trade relations and other types of economic turbulence."
National economists have referred to the nation being in a low-hire, low-fire environment, where jobs are neither being created nor lost at a notable pace.
And the national unemployment rate has seen a similar trend since March 2025, though it has seen more notable fluctuations and sits at a lower rate that of Oregon.
While unusual, the state’s flat unemployment rate is not unprecedented. Oregon Employment Department data show another stretch with little change in recent history. The rate stayed around 10.6% for 14 months in 2009-10.
While the unchanging rate is unusual, Krumenauer sees another trend that interests her.
“The big story that has been remarkably the same for almost two years is that the growth we have is mostly in private healthcare and social assistance,” she said. “Most other sectors of the economy have lost jobs over the past year, and that’s similar to what’s happening nationally.”
She points to the U.S.’s April jobs report, in which 115,000 jobs were created and 53,900 of those jobs were in private healthcare and social assistance.
In Oregon, the state added 500 jobs in April, while the healthcare and social assistance sector added 1,500 jobs.
Krumenauer said job growth in Oregon and nationwide is increasingly happening in a handful of sectors while others such as manufacturing are shrinking.
