The most recent jobless numbers are not as recent as you might expect. Among the lingering effects of the federal government shutdown is a delay in state unemployment numbers. News of a late-summer rise in Oregon jobless claims has only now come to light.
A sign seeking workers is displayed at a fast food restaurant in Portland, Ore., Monday, Dec. 27, 2021.
Jenny Kane / AP
Oregon’s unemployment rate has climbed one percentage point over the last year to hit 5.2% in September, one of the highest rates the state has seen in years.
Oregon’s Employment Department was finally able to verify September’s unemployment data after the 43-day government shutdown delayed the release of federal data that state economists rely on.
Data collection needed to calculate the October unemployment rate did not happen while the government was closed. As a result, Oregon will not publish an October unemployment rate at all.
Oregon’s unemployment rate moved up from 5% in August to 5.2% in September, according to state employment economist Gail Krumenauer.
“We’re seeing that unemployment has continued to drift up in Oregon,” Krumenauer told OPB. “We have gone from an unemployment rate of 4.2% in September of 2024 to 5.2% in September of 2025. And it’s been moving slowly but consistently upward. We’re not seeing a large change one month to the next, but we’re seeing a series of small changes.”
Krumenauer said in part that’s because more Oregonians are joining the job market who are eligible to work but don’t currently have a job. They’re considered the unemployed portion of the workforce, and are joining Oregon’s labor force at a faster rate than employers are hiring them.
“There is the unemployed part of the labor force,” Krumenauer explains, “which is 16 or older, reside in Oregon, and are not working but have actively been seeking work in the past four weeks, and are available and able to take a job if it’s offered to them — meaning you’re not deployed on active military duty or something like that. So the growth that we’re seeing is in the unemployed part of the labor force.”
That’s how Oregon is adding jobs — 3,300 in September — while still experiencing an increasing unemployment rate. In the last year, the labor force grew by nearly 18,000 people, Krumeauer said.
Healthcare is adding the most jobs, with nearly 11,500 over the last year. Meanwhile, jobs in the manufacturing of durable goods like computer chips and transportation equipment have gone down by almost 10,000 since last September.
The September numbers were severely delayed because workers at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which helps collect and feed data to states, were furloughed for more than a month during the government shutdown.
Krumenauer said the furlough came after September data had been collected. But since the shutdown lasted through the month of October, federal workers weren’t able to crunch the September numbers until recently. The shutdown also meant that data used to calculate the unemployment rate were not collected in October, making it impossible for Oregon to publish an October unemployment rate.
November’s unemployment rate for Oregon is expected to be released in early January, about a month later than normal.
