Local jobless rate worsens

Unemployment in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area worsened in May, reaching 12.3 percent of the total labor force, said the Oregon Employment Department on Monday.

That's up from an 11.9 percent metrowide jobless rate in April and 5.2 percent in May 2008. An estimated 137,600 area residents, including about 30,000 in Clark County, are now unemployed and looking for work. The total is 81,000 more than a year ago.

The news comes on the heels of new longer-range forecasts suggesting that unemployment nationwide will climb above 10 percent this year and remain high well into 2010, if not longer.

Last month, Oregon's jobless rate was 12.4 percent, second highest in the nation. Washington saw its rate climb to 9.4 percent, which mirrors the U.S. average. Employment trends in the metro area mirror statewide trends in Oregon and Washington.

In the 12 months through May, construction employment in the Portland-Vancouver metro region has declined by 10,800 jobs, the professional and business services sector is down 11,900 and manufacturing has given up 11,700 jobs, according to the Oregon employment agency. Manufacturing has been particularly hard hit, with losses in primary metal, down 300 jobs, and machinery manufacturing, off 200.

According to a report from the National Economic Policy Institute, since the recession took hold in December 2007, the U.S. economy has lost 5.7 million jobs, a rapid decline that caught President Barack Obama's administration and other economists off guard. In recent months, the velocity of job losses has slowed substantially, which, combined with increases in consumer spending, had offered hope that a recovery is beginning to take hold.

But, according to a separate story in the Washington Post on Monday, employers cut 345,000 jobs last month, while the nation's growing working-age population requires the job market to expand by 125,000 to 150,000 a month just to keep the unemployment rate stable.

"Unemployment won't peak until this time next year, and then it will remain very high through next year," Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, told the Post. "It won't get back to full employment until 2013 or 2014. This really speaks to the severity of the job losses that have been absorbed by the economy. They were massive."

While the recession has touched workers across the spectrum, "many of the job losses are in manufacturing and construction, affecting less-educated workers and immigrants," Zandi said. "It is going to be hard for them to find their way back into the work force quickly."

In the Portland-Vancouver market, only government and the education-health care sectors have added workers in the 12 months through May. But it's not enough to keep up with the down draft from job losses in construction and manufacturing.