Oregon job situation article. Whether the fed raises or not on Tuesday, we are still not out of the woods yet into 2000 in terms of interest rate rises IMO.
<<What a difference a little sun makes.
Last month, when the skies were clear, Oregon businesses added 12,100 jobs to their payrolls, shoving seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment to an all-time high of 1,592,800.
Construction, lumber and food processing companies were among those to take advantage of the dry October days. Construction outfits alone hired 1,700 additional workers, primarily for heavy construction projects such as road-building.
"Many industries are positively influenced by the weather," generally preferring sunshine to mud, said David Cooke, employment economist for the Oregon Employment Department.
Oregon hasn't experienced such a large month-to-month job jump since mid-1984. In the boom years of 1994-96, monthly job gains averaged about 4,000 workers.
"It's an unusually large one-month increase," Cooke said.
Further signs of an economic pickup showed up in the unemployment rate, which dropped three-tenths of a percentage point in October to 5.5 percent. Although the labor market is tight, Oregon's jobless rate remains significantly higher than the U.S. rate of 4.1 percent.
The leap in jobs, after two months of declines, eased economists' concerns that employment growth for the year might lag official estimates.
"Things are looking stronger," said John Mitchell, regional economist for U.S. Bancorp. "They're now more consistent with the notion Oregon isn't going negative, it's just slowing down."
State economists estimate that jobs will grow by a rate of between 1.9 percent and 2.1 percent in 1999. Based on the October figures, released by the Oregon Employment Department on Friday, the state's job base has increased 1.7 percent over the past year.
Manufacturers posted employment gains after several months of losses, a turnaround that Mitchell called "particularly encouraging."
Electronic equipment-makers, which include semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel Corp., added 100 workers in October. During the last six months, these high-technology companies pumped up payrolls by 800. The gradual rise indicates that the troubled times brought about by Asia's financial crisis have eased.
"It looks like that sector has been turning around," Cooke said.
Transportation equipment-makers also boosted manufacturing employment, with gains of 400 seasonally adjusted jobs. Gunderson Inc., which makes rail cars, Freightliner Corp., which makes trucks, and Monaco Coach Corp., which manufactures motor homes, are among those that have said they are adding jobs.
The job gains went beyond manufacturing. Retailers added jobs after months of little growth. Service-related businesses, which include temp agencies, legal services and engineering, also padded employment ranks with 3,200 additional hires during October.
The employment statistics and the unemployment rate are adjusted to account for seasonal variations.
Construction employment jumped, the first increase in six months, in part because the weather was abnormally favorable. Most of the gains came in heavy construction and in special trades, such as electrical and plumbing contractors.
"We're having a terrific year," said Bill Smith, head of Northwest Demolition and Dismantling in Wilsonville.
The pace is no longer "feverish," like the boom years of the mid-1990s, he said, but a shortage of workers still hampers the industry.
"We're constantly looking for versatile, skilled people," he said.
Most of Northwest Demolition's work now comes from public-sector clients, such as the Port of Portland and city and county governments, Smith said. Earlier in the decade, private-sector projects accounted for most of the work.>>
oregonlive.com
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