NEWS UPDATE FROM STATE REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GOMBERG: Employment Changes in Oregon

By Representative David Gomberg, House District 10

8/12/2024

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

From time to time, legislators get to make good phone calls. That was the case Wednesday when I called the Port of Newport to share that we had received an Oregon grant to match federal money and rebuild Port Dock 7 and better support the local fishing fleet.

A larger request of $25 million was made to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant program. The port has now secured the smaller, yet still substantial amount of $9.5 million from the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Connect Oregon program.

Port officials regularly discuss the need for funding with agencies and legislators because of the importance of the project. Port Dock 7 is comprised of 119 slips, but its declining condition has required the port to restrict it to 60 vessels, most of which represent small businesses that provided employment to area residents.

The Port of Newport received $9 million to rebuild Port Dock 7 (left). Rendering of Lighthouse Village Apartments in Lincoln City (right).

At the same time, Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) allocated $10 million to create 63 affordable homes on the Oregon Coast and Metro region. What’s interesting here is that $6.6 million of the money went to Portland for 35 units and $3.1 million to Lincoln City for 37 apartments. Clearly, we are holding our own!

Lincoln County Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Housing Authority of Lincoln County (HALC) are joining forces to create twenty-eight units of housing dedicated to HHS clients. The Lighthouse Village project is planned to have 26 one-bedroom units and 2 two-bedroom units at the north end of Lincoln City north of the Logan Road intersection.

One of the things I keep an eye on as your legislator is the health of our economy and the employment situation across the state.

If more people are working and more people are getting paid better for the work they do, many of those people and dollars will flow to our district as one of the most desirable tourism destinations in the state.

The Oregon Employment Department (OED) recently provided several updates about employment numbers and customer service improvements.

Overall, the news looks good. Oregon employers added 600 jobs to non-farm payrolls and Oregon’s unemployment rate was 4.1% in June, which was the same as the national rate. The takeaway is that Oregon is having slow job growth, with a relatively high number of job openings and some difficulty for employers to find enough workers to fill all the jobs. Unemployment remains relatively low and stable in recent months.

Not all the news is good.

Two Oregon lumber mills on opposite ends of the state are shutting down, the latest in a long line of closures. That includes Western Cascade Industries’ mill — which employs 50 people at its 25-year-old site in Toledo. Three mills closed earlier in the year, including the Interfor Corp sawmill in Philomath. That closure cost another 100 jobs. Interfor cited “persistent high log costs in the region” and “weak lumber market conditions” for the closure.

Shifting from wood chips to computer chips, tech giant Intel, Oregon’s second-largest private employer, announced this week that it will cut 15% of its total workforce. The Oregonian reports that this could have a significant impact in the Beaver State. In total, the company expects to cut close to 15,000 jobs. According to The Oregonian’s reporting, as many as 3,000 of those lost jobs could be in Oregon, assuming cuts are distributed equally across the company workforce. Nearly half of Intel’s total U.S. employment is in Oregon.

The state’s newspapers have shed three-quarters of their jobs since 2001 as readers and advertisers moved online, according to data from the Oregon Employment Department. The industry has lost thousands of jobs altogether as publications downsized and, in some cases, stopped printing altogether.

Recent losses may be felt most acutely in small towns that can leave a “news desert” where a local information void is filled by rumor and gossip traded on social media sites – and where there’s no one holding local governments accountable or acknowledging good news, like high school graduations and weddings.

“Without a local newspaper, a community loses its connection to the past, its ability to bring people together to resolve issues in a civil manner and most importantly – we lose a common bond of celebrating our community and the people that make it special,” said J. Brian Monihan, Carpenter Media’s Oregon publisher.

Officials with the Oregon Department of Transportation say they will have to slash more than 1,000 jobs if lawmakers don’t address the agency’s financial woes during next year’s legislative session. Among the budget’s most glaring problems, according to ODOT: a projected revenue shortfall of more than $354 million in 2025-2027, requiring a reduction of more than $101 million in services and supplies, such as striping lanes and de-icing roads.

In rural areas, for example, cutting staff could force the state to consolidate crews, close maintenance stations, and move staff to centralized locations, increasing response times.

As I have often reported, ODOT relies largely on gasoline taxes which are declining as we drive less or use fuel-efficient vehicles. Lawmakers next year are expected to consider a package that could revamp how the state funds its ailing transportation system. The changes could include replacement revenue that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund basic maintenance and new projects.

And here is one more concerning element.

Nearly 1 in 4 Oregon workers is over 55, nearing or beyond the typical retirement age.

The share of older workers in the state’s labor force has more than doubled since 1990, according to a new report from the Oregon Employment Department. If there’s a big wave of retirements in the offing, that could limit future economic growth — especially in those industries with the highest share of older workers.

Oregon is one of the “oldest” states in the nation, with the median resident about 17 months older than the median American. Across our part of Oregon, one-third of the population is over age 65. That’s showing up in added demands on social service agencies and on the state’s health care system.

Overall, leisure and hospitality appear to have rebounded from the pandemic. Construction is on a slow, steady climb. Health care, social services, and education are growing.

In our part of Oregon, wages are running ahead of the legal minimum. There are help-wanted signs everywhere. And we continue to struggle to provide affordable housing for people who want to work or retire here.

The Employment Division also reported that they continue to work to reduce customer service delays and has seen marked improvements in addressing its workload across the board.

The Department has struggled for months to promptly pay jobless benefits, a problem the agency attributes to a decline in staffing. The growing backlog of unpaid assistance stacked up and led to a flood of calls to the agency from people seeking an explanation.

The Employment Department’s data shows that more than a third of people who call for help wait at least an hour. Many wait for several hours, and others can’t get through at all.

In May, even as the calls came flooding in, the Employment Department made the decision to spend less time answering the phone and devote more time to processing more claims. The agency says the switch is paying off. The backlog of held-up jobless claims has fallen, and the number of claims the department promptly processes rose sharply in June.

Complicating matters, the Employment Department says it has been doing extra work to scrutinize claims to guard against fraud.

The agency blames a decline in its own workforce, reporting that the number of staff processing benefit applications has dropped by two-thirds since last summer when federal funding for those positions ended.

The Legislature approved additional funding to replace some of the staff during the last legislative session. But the employment department says those new workers won’t begin making a difference until late this year after it has had time to hire and train them.

OED concluded, “The hiring and training of new employees in both programs (Paid Leave and Unemployment Insurance) continues. We’re already seeing results based on the additional staff hired since May. As more staff skill up, we anticipate proportionate increases in our efficiencies to address outstanding work and to reduce customer service delays.”

Here are some of the key points about how the Paid Leave Oregon and Unemployment Insurance programs are doing as of July 16:

Unemployment Insurance: Taking extra time to resolve claim issues is working! Overall claim volume has increased since the start of the new fiscal year as anticipated, but OED has still made progress on resolving claim issues that prevent payment. About $14 million of UI benefits are reaching Oregonians every week; $404 million since January 1^st.,About 30,000 claims are submitted each week.
PaidLeave Oregon: Since going live with the program in 2023, OED has provided over half a billion dollars in Paid Leave Oregon benefits. While the number of people filing claims has increased, OED has still been able to improve service for customers. The agency has reduced the total number of open claims by nearly 29% and the average wait times for callers is down to less than 40 minutes.
Frances Online Improvements: On July 25, OED updated the status of Unemployment Insurance claims in their new computer program, Frances Online. The goal is to make it easier for claimants to understand what’s going on and to better describe if claimants need to do anything.

I took some private time last week to raft the western Rogue. It was time well spent but shooting the rapids seemed much like trying to get a bill passed in Salem.

Before departing, I spent Tuesday observing National Night Out.

National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie. It was great to see so many people and so many active organizations and vibrant communities. Sadly I could only reach three cities in the time allotted.

That’s Mayor Cross grilling burgers in Toledo, Mayor Wahlke with our Community College mascot in Lincoln City, and Mayor Kaplan smiling in Newport.

This coming week is stuffed with meetings. Tuesday alone I have 10 zooms on the schedule.

Wednesday, I’ll have breakfast with all the Lincoln County mayors. Thursday, I have legislative business in Portland. And Saturday, Susan and I will have some fun as judges at the Porsche Club of America Cascades Region car show, 11 a.m. at the Lincoln City Cultural Center.

Saturday night I fly out to research floating wind energy programs in Scotland. More on that later.

email: Rep.DavidGomberg@oregonlegislature.gov

phone: 503-986-1410

address: 900 Court St NE, H-480, Salem, OR, 97301

website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/gomberg