Low wages make it tough to fill jobs in Central Oregon

(Update: Employment agency comments; some wages rising; minimum wage goes up July 1)

Unemployment is down, but job openings are up. In Central Oregon, it’s proving tough to fill those openings.

Plus, Oregon’s minimum wage is going up again, on July 1.

Deschutes County’s minimum wage goes from $10.25 to $10.75 an hour. Crook and Jefferson county workers will see the minimum wage rise from from $10 to $10.50.

According to several staffing agencies, including Selectemp Employment Services, it’s tough for employers to find qualified workers right now.

There are also lots of ‘help wanted’ signs at retail stores, gas stations, restaurants and auto shops.

According to Jasmine, the cafe manager of Fearless Baking, it’s not easy to hire in Bend.

“One of the main things is: We do have a lot of people that move here from other places because it’s an adventure town, so they come here and want to be able to work their schedule around the adventures,” Jasmine said Friday.

Jasmine also said that, with so many restaurants, cafes and bars in towns, it’s easy for a person to pick up and leave one job to work at another. That means turnover is high. But she said potential hires that come from out of state are usually impressed with Oregon’s high minimum wage.

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker in the Bend area earned $22.27 per hour in May 2017. That’s about 9% below the U.S. average of $24.34 an hour. But Selectemp branch manager Katie Merickel said that’s changing.

“We’ve noticed, in the past couple of years, we’ve been pushing to work with business owners in recognizing how much it does cost to survive and live in Central Oregon, and that people are worth getting paid more money,” she said.

“We’ve noticed that it’s helped reduce turnover with a lot of our customers. Paying better wages — it’s keeping those people here. It’s keeping those people happy and making sure their families are fed,” Merickel said.

She also said that in the past year, they’ve seen pay rates go up about 20-25 percent, especially for construction and carpentry work.

“The talent market has definitely become extremely competitive. Unemployment rates are the lowest we’ve seen in decades. So it’s extremely competitive and difficult to get a person, an employee when you need them,” Merickel said.

But she noted the increase doesn’t apply to all industries, including housekeeping and hospitality.

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Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics news release:

Workers in the Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Statistical Area (defined as all of Deschutes County ) had an average (mean) hourly wage of $22.27 in May 2017, about 9 percent below the nationwide average of $24.34, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

Assistant Commissioner for Regional Operations Richard Holden noted that, after testing for statistical significance, wages in the local area were lower than their respective national averages in 10 of the 22 major occupational groups, including management; computer and mathematical; and business and financial operations.

Five groups had significantly higher wages than their respective national averages, including healthcare practitioners and technical; protective service; and healthcare support.

When compared to the nationwide distribution, local employment was more highly concentrated in nine of the 22 occupational groups, including food preparation and serving related; construction and extraction; and office and administrative support.

Conversely, 10 groups had employment shares significantly below their national representation, including production; business and financial operations; and transportation and material moving.

One occupational group–construction and extraction–was chosen to illustrate the diversity of data available for any of the 22 major occupational categories. Bend-Redmond had 4,690 jobs in construction and extraction, accounting for 6.0 percent of local area employment, significantly higher than the 4.0-percent share nationally. The average hourly wage for this occupational group locally was $21.33, significantly below the national wage of $24.01.

Some of the larger detailed occupations within the construction and extraction group included carpenters (1,230), construction laborers (560), and operating engineers and other construction equipment operators (310). Among the higher paying jobs were construction and building inspectors and first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers, with mean hourly wages of $32.80 and $31.91, respectively. At the lower end of the wage scale were helpers of electricians ($14.36) and helpers of brickmasons, blockmasons, stonemasons, and tile and marble setters ($14.85).

Location quotients allow us to explore the occupational make-up of a metropolitan area by comparing the composition of jobs in an area relative to the national average. For example, a location quotient of 2.0 indicates that an occupation accounts for twice the share of employment in the area than it does nationally.

In the Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Statistical Area, above-average concentrations of employment were found in many of the occupations within the construction and extraction group. For instance, carpenters were employed at 3.2 times the national rate in Bend, and cement masons and concrete finishers, at 2.6 times the U.S. average. On the other hand, construction laborers had a location quotient of 1.1 in Bend, indicating that this particular occupation’s local and national employment shares were similar.

These statistics are from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, a federal-state cooperative program between BLS and State Workforce Agencies, in this case, the Oregon Employment Department.

For more details: https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/occupationalemploymentandwages_bend.htm