Job Block Seen Through Magnifying Glass

As Oregon regains jobs lost at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic two years ago, the recovery is lagging in the Portland metro area, but only slightly.

According to the Oregon Employment Department, which released its latest report earlier this week, the metro area has regained about 80% (143,800) of the 179,800 jobs lost at the peak of the pandemic as of January.

“It’s a little bit behind the rest of the state, but just barely,” department economist Gail Krumenauer told reporters in a briefing Wednesday, March 9. “It’s really come up and is closer on par.”

She said it compares with the statewide average of 82% and the national average of 90%. Salem and Bend have now reached or exceeded pre-pandemic employment levels.

In earlier reports, the Portland area’s recovery had lagged significantly behind the rest of the state.

The unemployment rate for the Portland area, defined by the Employment Department as Multnomah and Washington counties, was 3.9% in January, unchanged from the previous month. Statewide it was 4.3%, not much different from 4.2% in December. The national figure for January was 4%. (The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a wider definition for the Portland metro area that takes in five counties in Oregon and two in Washington. Its most recent unemployment rate was 3.9% in December.)

Oregon’s statewide rate shot up from an adjusted 3.6% in March 2020 to 13.1% the following month. It has dropped since, and economists with the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis project that the state will reach pre-pandemic employment levels in the second half of this year.

The Employment Department report for the two-county region lists the greatest gains by sector for 2021: leisure and hospitality (hotels. restaurants and bars), 1,900; retail trade, 900, and manufacturing, 700. The greatest losses by sector: local government and schools, 1,200; private health care and social assistance, 800; professional and business services, 700.

Krumenauer said Oregon gained 5,700 jobs in January. Top gains for the month: Leisure and hospitality 2,200 jobs; local government and schools, 1,500; professional and business services, 1,200.

“Several sectors of Oregon’s economy have fully recovered and now have more jobs than they did before the recession,” she said.

Among them are construction; manufacturing of nondurable goods, such as food and beverages; retail trade; transportation, warehousing and utilities; information services and professional and technical services.

In contrast, she said, private health care and social assistance lost 3,000 jobs statewide in the past year.

Krumenauer hesitated to say whether a further relaxation of restrictions from the pandemic — namely, the state’s requirement for wearing face masks indoors that will end March 12 — will spur more hiring or affect future job gains. Virtually all other restrictions ended in mid-2021, when Gov. Kate Brown let most of her executive orders expire, but the indoor mask mandate re-emerged with the delta and omicron variants of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

“It’s not too dissimilar to what we’ve seen in previous waves of the pandemic,” when

public confidence dictated the pace of business activity, Krumenauer said.

“I think there are too many unknowns at this point. But if cases stay low, I think people will have that confidence.”