Coos & Curry County Economic Indicators - July 2022

You can find the economic indicators for the month of July at this link and attached to this email.

Coos County lost 330 jobs and Curry County added 50 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis since June of last year. The unemployment rate was 4.4% in Coos and 4.9% in Curry, both of which are very low for the South Coast in historical perspective.

The special graph this month tries to answer an underlying question for our current economic situation. We know the unemployment rate is low, but how much of that low unemployment is because people have dropped out of the labor force entirely? The graph below shows the change in the seasonally adjusted civilian labor force relative to 2010.

The short answer is that in terms of the numbers working, there are more people in the labor force than pre-pandemic. That said, there are fewer workers than there were in 2010. Whereas Oregon’s labor force has grown about 12%, the South Coast labor force has declined 2% since 2010.

Henry L. Fields

Workforce Analyst/Economist

Serving Lane and Douglas counties

Oregon Employment Department

(541) 359-9178 | henry.l.fields@employ.oregon.gov