Oregon’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 12.2 % in June, with construction adding jobs for the first time in more than a year, according to the state Employment Department.
The jobless rate has more than doubled in the past year, and the state continued to shed jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis in June. Oregon’s jobless rate was 2.7 percentage points higher than the national average of 9.5% last month.
But the state is no longer seeing its jobless rate jump by a half percent to a percent a month, as it did from the middle of last year through the first quarter of this year.
“We could be leveling off at this point,” Art Ayre, the state’s employment economist, said in a press conference. “We’ve had three months of very little change.”
Seasonally adjusted payroll employment fell 7,200 to 1.63 million jobs. Government was the biggest job cutter, shedding 3,700 jobs. The construction industry added 1,600 jobs, while manufacturing shed 1,900 jobs.
Without the seasonal adjustments, the state’s payrolls actually rose by 800.
