Oregon's metropolitan unemployment rankings

The Portland Business Journal reported last week that the number of unemployed persons in Portland still sits at nearly double the level before the Great Recession. Portland ranked 64th of America's top 100 metro areas, meaning nearly two-thirds of the metros had even higher rates of increase in the number of unemployed between September 2007 and September 2011.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Portland had 51,810 unemployed in September 2007, and 100,426 in September 2011.

In other BLS rankings, Portland ranked 23rd best (out of 372 U.S. metropolitan areas) for the drop in its unemployment rate (1.5 percentage points) between September 2010 and September 2011. Bend was the only other metro area in Oregon to post a larger decline, 1.8 percentage points over the year.



Get more details in the from the Portland Business Journal article or in the BLS metropolitan employment and unemployment news release.