“Help wanted” signs say it all — many employers in central coast’s tourist-oriented economy are still hunting for workers

By JORDAN ESSOE and DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com

They’re hard to miss.

Blooming on shop doors and restaurant windows up and down the coast, across the state, and nationwide are signs that read “Help Wanted” and “Now Hiring.”

The signs come and go and repeat along the boulevard. One may disappear only to be replaced by another directly across the street. Some have been hung so long it feels as if they’ve become part of the permanent facade of the neighborhood.

A certain amount of local job openings is a good thing. It means the economy is active and there is room in the community for new blood. A lingering surplus of job openings – especially open positions that remain vacant for months or even years – is unsettling.

On the street, the resulting appearance is of an economic appetite that is both famished and full at the same time.

In Oregon, unemployment is down to 4 percent, close to the national rate, and the lowest it’s been since the pandemic began. In Lincoln County that rate is just over 5 percent, but job vacancies remain high – whether they are in restaurants or in schools or mental health clinics or behind the wheel of a cop car — and more jobs continue to be added. There are simply more jobs available than there are people actively looking for them, and in the short-term, that gap may continue to widen.

In February, Oregon had the largest job growth since last July, with an increase in leisure and hospitality positions leading the way. Leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants, is the industry with the highest number of job vacancies in northwest Oregon, including Lincoln County. A close second is the healthcare industry, but unlike nursing or medical assistant positions, job openings at restaurants remain visually obvious to anyone driving down the road.

Job websites have largely supplanted newspaper and magazine want ads. Video recruiting is setting new norms that further divorce job hiring from the printed word.

But the simple, printed sign on the front of a building isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

Some reasons for leaving

In broad terms, a main reason for the imbalance between the number of jobs being offered versus the amount of jobs being sought has to do with timing. During the outset of the pandemic lockdown, tens of millions of people lost their jobs all at once. Millions more quit. An enormous population became unemployed on roughly the same timeline – but they are not all returning to work at the same speed.

Businesses largely want their positions refilled immediately, and for the workplace status quo to return.

But the national character of the workforce has been transformed by our unprecedented times. There are reasons behind persistent job vacancies that go well beyond the pandemic. Workers are not eager to settle for the same job conditions they left behind two years ago. The pandemic made it mandatory for many Americans to break with the inertia of routine, and as a result helped workers clarify their goals and priorities.

A Pew Research Center national survey in 2021 found that low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work are the top reasons why Americans quit their jobs during the pandemic.

Roughly half say child-care issues were a reason they quit a job. A similar number pointed to an inability to choose their own hours and a lack of good benefits such as health insurance and paid time off.

About four-in-10 adults who quit a job said a reason was that they were working too many hours, while three-in-10 cited working too few hours. When asked whether their reasons for quitting a job were related to the coronavirus outbreak, 31 percent said it was. Those without a four-year college degree (34 percent) were more likely than those with a bachelor’s degree or more education (21 percent) to say the pandemic played a role in their decision.

A majority of those who quit a job in 2021 and are not retired say they are now employed, either full-time (55 percent) or part-time (23 percent). Of those, 61 percent say it was at least somewhat easy for them to find their current job, with 33 percent saying it was very easy.

For the most part, workers who quit a job last year and are now employed somewhere else see their current work situation as an improvement over their previous job. At least half of these workers say that compared with their last job, they are now earning more money, have more opportunities for advancement, have an easier time balancing work and family responsibilities, and have more flexibility to choose when they put in their work hours.

Coastal job vacancies highest yet

The number of job vacancies reported by employers in northwest Oregon, including Lincoln County, leaped far higher last year than at any time since a state survey began in 2015.

“All of this is pretty much along the lines we’ve been seeing since the pandemic started,” said Oregon Employment Department economist Erik Knoder, who compiled the annual survey of 1,500 big and small employers in the five-county region. “But this survey really puts some specific numbers to the general trends that have been reported so far.”

Some major highlights are the 20-page report include:

• One-third of vacancies reported last year had been open for 60 days or longer. That’s up from 23 percent in 2019.
• Vacancies in the leisure, health care and retail trade industries accounted for 4,870 of the total 7,311 vacancies reported for the survey’s five-county area, which includes Lincoln, Clatsop, Tillamook, Columbia and Benton counties.
• Broken down by occupation group, food preparation and serving, along with building and grounds cleaning, topped the vacancy list.
• The fewest vacancies, by contrast, were reported in management and protective service positions and business and financial operations.
• Across the five-county region last year, employers in 163 different occupations were left looking to fill vacant spots.
• The most difficult occupations to fill were housekeepers, personal care aides and retail salespeople.
• Nearly three-quarters of the Northwest Oregon job vacancies required no education beyond high school.
• While the labor shortage has pushed up wages in some sectors, four out of 10 vacancies in the survey region pay less than $15 per hour. A roughly similar share fell into an hourly wage bracket from $15 to $24.99 per hour.
• Vacancies requiring higher education are more likely to be higher paying, permanent and require experience.

“It’s a very tight labor market, but there is just not a big army of reserve unemployed in the county,” Knoder said. “[Lincoln County] is sort of a little isolated island and I’m not sensing that’s going to change anytime soon.”

• Jordan Essoe is a Waldport-based freelance writer who can be reached at alseajournal@gmail.com
• Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com