Oregon Public Broadcasting

Last week, we learned Oregon’s 12.1 percent March unemployment rate ranked second-worst in the country.

Only the struggling auto manufacturing state of Michigan is in worse shape.

Now the county-by-county numbers are out for Oregon.  They reveal that unemployment in the rural part of the state is far worse than the statewide average.

Central Oregon correspondent Ethan Lindsey reports.

The highest unemployment rate in the state is in Crook County, where Prineville is -- it's 18.5 percent.

Carolyn Eagan is a regional economist in Bend for the Oregon Department of Employment.

She says rural unemployment has historically been higher than urban. And, in this recession, the loss of construction and manufacturing jobs hits rural Oregon hardest.

Carolyn Eagan: “If you look at the top ten counties for unemployment rates in March, I mean we have Crook, Harney, Josephine, Columbia, Klamath, all more rural counties. And so, the more rural the county, the more likely they are to have a high unemployment rate.”

Only six counties in the state boast unemployment rates in the single digits. At 8.4-percent, Corvallis and Benton County’s employment picture is the rosiest -- among the dismal.

Unemployment in the growing county of Deschutes County, around Bend, was at 14.7 percent.

That was the worst rate for an urban center in the state, and twice the city’s jobless rate from just one year ago.

Eagan says the inflow of early retirees from California has put Bend in a tougher situation even when new jobs are created.

Carolyn Eagan: “Our civilian labor force is still growing. It’s a combination of retirees not retiring, or if it’s a household with two adults the second adult is looking for work now. So all these people are coming back into the labor force.”

And economists say that trend holds true across the state, regardless of the urban-rural divide.