PORTLAND, Ore. — A snapshot of economic indicators shows that the greater Portland area had negative job growth from April 2023 to April 2024, meaning a wide swath of the metro region, including Vancouver and Hillsboro, lost more jobs than it gained.
The losses give Portland the unfortunate distinction of having the largest employment loss for that time period among the top 50 largest U.S. metro areas. The top three cities for job growth were Las Vegas, Oklahoma City and Sacramento, according to a graph from Oregon state economist Jake Procino.
KGW reached out to Procino to ask what's causing Portland's drop. He said a big driver was layoffs at many large employers in the region including Nike, Columbia, UPS, Vacassa and several others. Retirements have also been a contributor, and it hasn't been balanced out by new arrivals because there's also been a stagnation in migration.
"So traditionally, in the recent past, Portland has seen a net inflow of migration," he said. "But lately, we have seen a stagnation or outflow. So we're not seeing any jobs being added due to people entering the workforce."
Procino puts out a monthly newsletter with all sorts of economic indicators, much of it focused on Multnomah County, but it involves a broader look as well. Looking at the same time period county-by-county for northwest Oregon, Marion and Polk counties fared best with 2.8% job growth. Clackamas County was at the bottom with 0.6% negative growth, meaning job loss.
The overall Portland area did still gain many jobs over the past year, he noted, just not enough to offset the losses. But that means looking at the aggregate numbers can obscure the fact that some industries are having a better time of it than others.
"For instance, we've seen the healthcare sector add a ton of jobs as of late," he explained. "But because we're losing more jobs in other sectors like manufacturing, retail trade or professional business services, we see the aggregate job loss go down."
The estimate from the federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics is that the Portland area lost a net 14,600 jobs, but Oregon tracks the numbers more closely, Procino said, and state economists think the total number of losses was more like 6,000 rather than 14,600. But a smaller loss is still not a gain.
One other notable graph in Procino's newsletter examines the number of minimum wage jobs by county as of the third quarter of 2023. Multnomah County has the largest number of minimum wage jobs overall, although not the largest relative to its population; about 3.8% of Multnomah County's jobs are minimum wage, versus 4.7% in Linn County, even though Linn County has the lowest raw total number of minimum wage jobs in the region.
