A new employment study released Friday covering Lincoln County and four adjacent areas shows, once again, that the chances of landing a full-time job with higher pay increase with the more education you have.
The study by the Oregon Employment Department was of job vacancies in Lincoln, Benton, Tillamook, Clatsop and Columbia counties during 2018, drawn from a survey of 550 private-sector employers.
The area – called northwest Oregon by the agency — had 3,385 private-sector job vacancies on an average day in 2018, the agency said. This was a decrease by 365 vacancies in 2017.
Most job vacancies were for relatively low-paying positions, according to the study. Employers were offering $15 or less per hour for 49 percent of all vacancies. Only 10 percent of vacancies were offering $25 per hour or more.
Sixty-one percent of job vacancies had either no educational requirement at all or required only a high school diploma, the study said. These vacancies also tended to offer lower pay.
Vacancies that required training showed the importance of getting some education or training beyond high school, the study said. The average hourly wage was much higher, essentially all were permanent positions, and 84 percent were for full-time jobs.
The industry with the most vacancies was leisure and hospitality; it had an average of 863 job vacancies on any given day. The leisure and hospitality industry in the five counties had an estimated average annual employment of 16,590 in 2018, an average of nearly 45 hires per day. One factor that may influence the number of those vacancies is the relatively high turnover and low average pay.
Two other large industries in Northwest Oregon were also near the top of the list for having the most job vacancies. Health care and social assistance and manufacturing took the number two and number three positions. Retail trade slipped to the fourth position in 2018. These industries are among the largest in northwest Oregon, so it’s no surprise that they had the most job vacancies in 2018, the study said.
The survey also revealed that the occupations with the most vacancies were maids and housekeepers (mostly in lodging); meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers (mostly in fish plants); production workers; and personal care aides – which is pretty much what you would expect given the dominant industries.
Lincoln County’s unemployment rate of 5 percent is one of the highest in Oregon, which has a statewide unemployment rate of 4.1 percent.
Vacancies used in the state study are estimated from point-in-time surveys. The survey is mailed to employers each quarter and respondents are asked about vacancies they have at that time. The responses from the four quarterly surveys were combined to make an estimate of the average number of vacancies during the year.
