Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon’s rising unemployment rate stalled in April -- at 12 percent. As Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, local economists stay it’s too soon to tell what that means for the economy.

Since the economic crisis started last fall, Oregon’s employment rate has jumped an average of one percentage point every month. 

It reached 11.9 percent in March -- that’s a revised figure.

But in April, it barely jumped at all -- to 12 percent. State employment economist, Art Ayre, says it’s encouraging news, but....

Art Ayre: “We do not want to read too much into one month. This does not necessarily mean that future months unemployment rates will remain stable. We will have to wait and see what happens in those future months. And again, our best measure of employment over the month showed another large seasonally adjusted decline and prior to the onset of this recession, if we’d seen a seasonally adjusted decline of that magnitude, that would have been very large.”

That seasonally adjusted decline was about 9500 positions. The jobs came out of the manufacturing sector, construction, business services, and transportation.

But as Ayre says, a loss of 9500 jobs sounds like good news when compared to the 23.000 jobs that were lost in February.

Art Ayre: “Oregon has fared somewhat worse than the nation across most of its industries, but not all of its industries. Seven of the 11 major industry sectors have fared worse over the last year than have comparable industries at the national level.” 

The four areas where jobs were added in April, were in the government, education sector, health services and leisure.

Some of the people looking for those jobs might come here -- a job center in Tualatin. People sit at rows of computers trying to find work. Gearhardt Quast is an optical engineer and machinist.

Gearhardt Quast: “I’ve been unemployed for 13 months now. Was working in the commercial aircraft industry and there was a contraction in that field and I got spit out the side.”

Kristian: “That’s a long time. How are you managing?”

Gearhardt Quast: “Unemployment and I’ve got a part-time job as a machinist, but it’s so I worked one day last week. And they didn’t want anybody today, so I had to call in this afternoon and see if they needed anyone this week."

Finding a job in Oregon is tough. The state has the third highest unemployment rate -- a full three percentage points higher than the national average of 8.9 percent.