Each quarter, the Employment Department's Research staff writes a summary of unemployment rates and employment trends by region. We provide this narrative to the Office of Economic Analysis for their quarterly economic forecast. Here are two brief highlights from the latest Employment Department summary:
- Total nonfarm employment in Oregon increased by 1.2 percent (not seasonally adjusted) from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011. This marked the state's fifth consecutive quarter of positive over-the-year employment growth.
- In the fourth quarter of 2011, regional unemployment rates (not seasonally adjusted) ranged from a low of 7.5 percent in the Columbia Gorge to a high of 12.1 percent in Central Oregon.
The Research Division also recently updated information on quarterly employment leading into and following the Great Recession. The first eight quarters of the economic recovery are still overshadowed by the job losses during the recession. In addition, more than one-half of the job growth in Oregon since the third quarter of 2009 has occurred in lower-wage industries. Lower-wage industries are those where the median wage was between $8.68 and $11.34 per hour in the first quarter of 2007.
For more information about employment growth for lower-wage, mid-wage, and higher-wage industries, check out the original article by Special Projects Analyst Barbara Peniston, published in Oregon Labor Trends.
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