The month of July saw more steady job growth, but as the school year starts and the weather begins to turn, the labor market is set to see seasonal patterns take place as usual, according to regional economist Scott Bailey.
“So there’s pretty typical seasonal patterns that occur if you’re just looking at actual counts of people working, school starts … Construction employment tends to peak in September-October and then tends to go down through the winter months before starting up again in the spring,” Bailey said. “Of course, we always get a bit of retail hiring, which usually starts in October-November.”
He said, along with retail, delivery services like UPS tend to hire seasonal workers during that period.
“Restaurants tend to cut back a little bit when the weather turns,” Bailey said. “So we see those things tend to happen every year, and we’ll probably see those again.”
In July, unadjusted employment rose by 800 jobs with total employment at 188,600 jobs in Clark County, according to Bailey’s data. Since July 2022, total employment rose 3.5%, for a total of new jobs in the year’s span reaching 6,300. No employment sectors lost jobs in June, but between July 2022 and July 2023 the manufacturing sector lost 200 jobs, down 1.3% in that span.
“Clark County has had the best recovery from the early days of the pandemic of any area in the state,” Bailey said. “We’ve got better job growth here. We have low unemployment. So things have looked pretty good here.”
The county’s unemployment rate was estimated at 3.5% for the month of July. Bailey added the peak of monthly unemployment hits in January.
Since the beginning of the pandemic in February 2020, Clark County has gained a net total of 16,700 jobs, an increase of 9.8%.
“That was better than the nation (+2.6%), the state (+2.6%), Oregon (+1.0%), Portland metro (+0.7%) and Seattle metro (-0.4%),” Bailey stated in his monthly update for July. “It was also better than any labor market in the state. Every sector has fully recovered, with the exception of public education.”
The public education sector has gained 100 jobs in the month of July, only good for a rise of 0.8% since July 2022.
Bailey believes the public education sector will see a higher percentage in job growth in the reports for August and September when classified staff and bus drivers return from their temporary layoffs.
With the employment scene in the county looking positive, Bailey did acknowledge the household struggles. He said, over the last three years, food prices have gone up 19% to 20% on average for total meal costs at home. Energy costs are way up as well, he added.
“The average household has taken a pretty good hit, and so that’s why you’ll see, especially renters with rents going up, there’s still a fair number of households, even if they’re employed [that] haven’t kept up with inflation overall over the last three years,” Bailey said. “And so a lot of them, a fair number of households are struggling [to keep] up with basic payments.”
