Pallets of lumber sit outside of a building at Starfire Lumber in Cottage Grove on Feb. 5, 2026. Wood production is among the manufacturing industries to lose employment in recent years.
Zac Ziegler / KLCC
Oregon’s unemployment rate went down a tenth of a percentage point in August, according to the latest Oregon Employment Department report, dropping the state’s jobless rate to 5.1%.
The state’s unemployment rate has been relatively flat for more than a year, remaining between 5.0% and 5.3% since March 2025.
But despite the steady unemployment rate, the state has been on a long-term trend of losing jobs.
Oregon has lost 10,900 jobs in the past year while the unemployment rate remained flat.
It has lost a total of 24,500 jobs since September 2024, when the unemployment rate was 4.2%.
The sector most affected by losses is manufacturing, which is down 14,600 jobs over the past two years. And those losses have been felt across several well-known Oregon industries.
“Food manufacturing hasn’t recovered since the pandemic, so we’ve seen weakness in things like fruit and vegetable canning and frozen foods,” said Oregon Employment Economist Gail Krumenauer. “We’ve also seen that wood products had several publicly announced closures of sawmills and other facilities.”
Those go along with an industry known for high-dollar manufacturing in the state.
“There’s a lot of emphasis on the semiconductor piece and what’s been happening there, and that is a significant piece of what has happened more broadly in manufacturing in Oregon,” said Krumenauer. “But there has been weakness across several areas of the manufacturing sector.”
One upside, Krumenauer said, is that the number of Oregon manufacturing jobs has flattened in recent months, meaning the manufacturing decline may be ending.
Losses have also come in the retail trade sector — which Krumenauer said is a long-term trend that began with the growth in online shopping — and federal government employment, which saw losses due to federal budget cuts early in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Losses in those fields have been balanced in part by gains in healthcare, which has added 10,200 jobs in the past year.
Zac Ziegler is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.
