Eugene Unemployment Declines 1.0% Month over Month ! (Springfield, Bend: 2009, find a job, assessment)

[CCCVDUR]

The moment we've been waiting for since the Sept 2008 stock market crash !

Eugene unemployment has finally dropped, month over month (Aug-Sept) by an entire percentage point (12.4 to 11.5), as has the entire state of Oregon (11.7 to 10.8)!

Bureau of Labor Statistics PDF Report released 10am 10/28/2009:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/metro.pdf

Now, the more important question . . . as Mr. E suggested this in another post for another thread . . . What strategies for finding a Eugene job either 1) in advance, or, 2) on arrival ?

And for the record, looking at "twin cities" of Eugene: Boulder, Santa Cruz, Flagstaff, Corvallis, and Bend have all dropped !

(Note the above is an incomplete assessment since these are not U6 figures.)

[Olduvai2020]

Originally Posted by Tom Lane

Eugene unemployment has finally dropped, month over month (Aug-Sept) by an entire percentage point (12.4 to 11.5), as has the entire state of Oregon (11.7 to 10.8)!

If you read the BLS press release linked in your post, you will notice that the decline in unemployment rate in the Eugene-Springfield MSA was not due to the increase in employment (employment stayed pretty much flat at 145,800 in September compared to 145,700 in August), but instead due to the decrease in labor force, which went down from 185,600 in August to 183,200 in September. In other words, 4% of the unemployment rate decrease was due to increase in the number of jobs, while 96% was due to the decrease in the labor force.

There may be different reasons for why the labor force number went down. The biggest component is probably unemployed people who gave up on trying to find a job here, and are no longer counted by BLS as part of the labor force. Another component is people leaving the area because they can not find a job here; those are counted as labor force members in another MSA. I suspect the same dynamics may be present in other areas mentioned in your post... we do know that jobs are still contracting nationally, albeit at a slower pace than before.

[Mr Eugenified]

Some jobs advertised here: Jobs in Eugene, OR | Monster.com

There also is a job ad website that specifically focuses on Eugene, but I can not remember the name of it now. They used to advertise the website fairly frequently on local TV. Does anyone know what I am talking about?

[Metlakatla]

http://www.eugenejobs.net/ ?