Douglas County Economic Indicators - February 2024
The February 2024 edition of the Douglas County Economic Indicators is also available on Quality Info. Because of the compressed release schedule of January and February data, I’ll be back in your inbox with the March edition in a few weeks.
From January 2023 to 2024 Douglas saw very little change in jobs. While private education and health care added the most jobs over the year, manufacturing and professional services declined. Unemployment was a seasonally adjusted 4.7% in January, a 1.4 percentage point decline from the year before.
The special graph this month looks at the newest data release from our quarterly job vacancy survey to businesses. The most recent quarter completes the annual look at 2023, and we now have nine years of data on Oregon’s regions to look back on.
In 2023 Southwestern Oregon and the state both saw declines in the number of vacancies and level of difficulty filling open jobs in comparison to 2022. However, even this reduced level was higher than any year of the survey before 2021.
Likely what is happening is that there is some loosening of the labor market as we rebalance post-COVID, but that competition for workers is still elevated, particularly in certain industries and positions. In the annual data, the occupations with the highest number of difficult-to-fill vacancies included truck drivers, construction laborers, personal care aides, and nurses.
This month’s articles included:
50 Jobs That Pay Well…No College Necessary! on Quality Info
Report: Zero Migration, a Demographic Alternative Scenario on Oregon Office of Economic Analysis blog
As always, the Indicators contain all the latest economic data on our area. If you have a data question or want to learn more about any of these topics, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Henry L. Fields
Workforce Analyst
(541) 359-9178
