Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon's unemployment rate was essentially unchanged last month.

State officials say June marked four months of stagnation in hiring.

The state Employment Department said today the unemployment rate in June was 9.4 percent.

State employment economist Nick Beleiciks says it's hard to determine whether the forecast is sunny or bleak.

"At this point, because there’s such slow growth -- we’re really seeing a steady rate of three months of no increases or decreases, it’s really hard to say where we might go. We could start adding jobs again, or start losing jobs. We’re on the cusp of a change, and we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out," he said.

The employment figures show that the school-funding squeeze is having an impact. Local government education employment is down about 4 percent over the past year.

Overall government employment dropped by 3 percent.

In the same period, private sector jobs were up by about 2 percent.

Press release

http://www.employment.oregon.gov/EMPLOY/COMM/news/june_2011_unemployment_rate.shtml