It’s been a painful year for Oregon workers.
The state’s employers reported nearly 9,000 mass layoffs during 2025. That’s an extraordinary number by historical standards, topping the pace of job cuts during the worst days of the Great Recession.
Oregon’s unemployment rate has climbed a full percentage point in the past year to 5.2%, its highest level since the pandemic. Oregon has the third-highest jobless rate of any state, behind only California (5.6%) and Nevada (5.3%.)
Federal law only requires employers to report major job cuts, typically when a big employer lays off more than 50 people or a third of their staff. State data shows employers have cut thousands more jobs in smaller actions that aren’t reported publicly. Oregon has nearly 115,000 unemployed workers, according to the most recent state data.
Economists put the unemployed in three categories: Those who have lost their jobs, those who are new to the labor market, and those who quit their jobs. (Those who have been laid off or fired are frequently eligible for jobless benefits. Those in the other categories usually aren’t.)
In the tight labor market that followed the pandemic, most of Oregon’s unemployed were people who had come off the sidelines to look for work and take advantage of abundant opportunities and rising pay. The number of people quitting their jobs rose sharply as people sought better gigs. People who quit their jobs accounted for 5% of the unemployed at the end of 2020, then climbed to 16% in early 2024.
Now, fewer Oregonians are joining the labor market and even fewer are quitting. Most of the unemployed were laid off or fired.
“What’s happening in Oregon is also happening nationally, in broad strokes,” said Gail Krumenauer, economist with the Oregon Employment Department.
The unemployment rate has been rising nationwide, to 4.4% in September. But it’s climbing faster in Oregon.
Why are things worse here? There are many reasons but some of it has to do with Oregon being unusually reliant on manufacturing jobs and on one component of that industry in particular — semiconductors.
Intel, the state’s largest corporate employer, has eliminated more than 6,000 Oregon jobs in the past year. That includes more than 3,000 layoffs in Washington County since July.
New CEO Lip-Bu Tan argues that Intel will perform better with fewer layers of management. But many of his Oregon job cuts have been rank-and-file factory workers. That may reflect the enormous financial pressure on the chipmaker as it works to cut costs in response to falling revenues and market share lost to years of technological setbacks.
It’s not just chips, though.
Krumenauer notes that food processors, forest products companies, paper manufacturers and transportation equipment companies have all cut significant numbers of jobs.
“There’s not really any pluses in that sector,” Krumenauer said.
The labor market is especially bad in Multnomah County, Oregon’s largest. City of Portland economists noted earlier this month that the county has shed nearly 20,000 jobs since June 2023 and is down 40,000 jobs since before the pandemic.
The city’s economists didn’t specify a reason for the decline but business leaders have pointed to the shift toward remote work, reputational damage caused by 2020’s downtown riots, and an epidemic of homelessness and drug overdoses. Portland also has especially high personal income taxes, which could be a deterrent to potential employers.
Oregon’s deteriorating labor market is obviously bad news for workers, who will face more pressure looking for work. It’s also bad news for the state budget, which, in the absence of a sales tax, is highly dependent on income taxes.
Job losses also signal economic weakness, a message that can turn off potential investors and infect other sectors. Developers, for example, are less inclined to build housing in places that are losing jobs because fewer people have stable employment to fill apartments and pay their rents.
The city economists said employment “is often the best indicator of local economic trends in part because of how it is used in investment models.”
And right now, in Oregon, those indications are weak.
This is Oregon Insight, The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.