Unemployment rate soars in rural Ore. counties
By Associated PressPORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - One-third of the state's 36 counties have unemployment rates of at least 10 percent, the Oregon Employment Department says. Though bleak employment trends are seen across the state, those outside the Willamette Valley have been hit hardest. Grant County, in Eastern Oregon, had the state's highest unemployment rate in December - 15.9 percent. The recession was triggered by loans that went bad after house prices soared well beyond what workers could afford on middle-class pay. Not surprisingly, counties reliant on wood products posted high unemployment numbers. The jobless rate in Crook County, where wood-products manufacturing is the largest employer, reached 14 percent last month. Douglas County, also confronted by job losses in wood products, logged its highest December unemployment rate in nearly a quarter century: 12.8 percent. "Home construction has fallen off a cliff," Joe Cortright, a Portland economist, told The Oregonian newspaper. "When housing starts plummet, related industries take a beating, too." Early last year, Oregon's jobless rate was only 5.5 percent. Now more Oregonians are out of work than at any time since 1983. In Southern Oregon, Jackson County's jobless figure stopped just short of double-digits in December as unemployment hit 9.9 percent. Unemployment in the Portland metropolitan area was 8.1 percent, a full percentage point higher than it was in November. In Lane County, which includes Eugene, the jobless rate hit 9.5 percent. It was the county's highest December rate in 24 years. There were 17,711 people unemployed in Lane County in December - 7,918 more than December 2007. "With the loss of Hynix (Semiconductor Manufacturing) and the loss in wood products and some of the published losses in RV manufacturing, this has been a particularly hard year for manufacturing," state labor economist Brian Rooney said. But rural Oregon has suffered more because it lacks a broad employer base and is more dependent on seasonal employers such as the U.S. Forest Service, said Jason Yohannan, a state economist in La Grande. "This is a long-standing issue," he said. "It's not particular to the current recession."
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Most Popular |
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February 7, 2012
- Coos Bay / North Bend, Oregon
