Our next media briefing is scheduled for 1 p.m., Wed., Oct. 20.

Helping Oregonians Get Back to Work
WorkSource Oregon centers offer a variety of services to help Oregonians get back to work. The centers refer people to jobs, connect job seekers to resources that reduce barriers to returning to work, help people explore career options and training opportunities, assist with iMatchSkills® and work search requirements, and more. 

Last week’s Hiring Heroes for Healthcare statewide virtual job fair was a success, with more than 50 employers and 300 job seekers attending.

Here are just a few highlights of upcoming WorkSource Oregon events:

• WorkSource Oregon - Newport is hosting a job fair 1:30 -3:30 p.m., Wed., Oct. 20.
• Drive-thru job fair hiring events are scheduled Oct. 20-21 for job seekers in Clatskanie, Rainier and Vernonia.
• Walk’n’Talk in Hillsboro is focusing on manufacturing careers on Oct. 20 and Oct. 27 at the Hillsboro Brookwood Library.
• WorkSource Oregon is partnering with LinkedIn to host a profile workshop to help job seekers boost their online presence. From 9 – 10 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 21, LinkedIn expert Cecily Hastings will give job seekers tips and tricks to optimize their profile so employers come to them. Nearly 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn, and job seekers are hired two times faster on their site.

Economic Update

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. employers added 194,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in September. That would have been a typical number of jobs to add in a month prior to the pandemic. However, that 194,000 was a slowdown from the 366,000 jobs U.S. employers added in August, and significantly lower than the nearly 1.1 million jobs added in July. Employers still have five million fewer jobs than before the pandemic recession.

Leisure and hospitality – which includes jobs at hotels, restaurants, bars, and entertainment places – added the most jobs (74,000) in September. Public K-12 schools and universities fell 161,000 jobs short of their typical hiring as they struggled to find enough workers as the school year started. Health care lost 18,000 jobs in September.

There are three broad parts of the health care sector. They include ambulatory health care services (such as doctor’s and health practitioners’ offices); hospitals; and nursing and residential care facilities. Nationwide, ambulatory health care services has recovered 99.7% (all but 4,700) of the jobs lost in the spring of 2020. At the same time, hospitals are still down 93,000 jobs compared to February 2020, having only regained 28% of jobs lost in the recession. Nursing and residential care facilities have generally continued to lose jobs since the pandemic began. The industry has 426,000 fewer jobs than it did before the recession.

Oregon has seen some similar trends in the health care sector. As of August, ambulatory care jobs had increased by 3,100 during the past year. Meanwhile, hospitals saw small gains (300 jobs) during the past year, and employment at nursing and residential care facilities dropped by 1,300 jobs.

While the pace of job growth has slowed in the U.S., the number of job openings remains near record highs. There were 10.4 million unfilled jobs nationwide at the end of August. The number of people who quit their jobs hit a new record high at 4.3 million, or almost 3% of the workforce. At hotels, bars, restaurants, and entertainment places, almost 7% of the workforce quit in August.

The Employment Department will release information about Oregon’s unemployment rate and jobs numbers for September next Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 10 a.m. Next week, we also expect to have our quarterly job vacancy release, with new information about job openings in Oregon from July to September.

Listening Sessions on Temporary Availability Rule

The first Listening Session to receive feedback on changes to the “available to work” requirements for people claiming unemployment insurance (UI) benefits is 2:30 – 4 p.m. this Thursday, Oct. 14. The department has scheduled six listening sessions for businesses, workers, community organizations, and others to give feedback on the new temporary rule before any permanent changes are made. All listening session dates and times are posted on the unemployment.oregon.gov webinar page. Visit our online Temporary Eligibility Rule FAQs for more information. 

Last week’s statistics

• Last week, we paid about $28 million in benefits to 30,000 Oregonians.
• $11 billion in benefits have been paid to more than 620,000 people from March 15, 2020 – October 9, 2021. 
• From Monday, Oct. 4 – Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, the Employment Department answered nearly 93% of calls in 15 minutes or less, meeting its July 1 goal. Of these, 74.9% were answered in under five minutes. 
• Nearly 97% of Contact Us inquiries were resolved in seven days or less. 

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