Clark County’s job market added 900 jobs during the month of May, although according to regional economist Scott Bailey, that number represents a bit of a slowdown in the labor market when viewed in terms of usual seasonal trends.
The county’s unemployment rate for May was estimated at 4.8 percent, a slight increase over the 4.6 percent reported for the same month last year.
Total employment rose to 170,400, with the biggest gains in the trade, transportation and utilities sector, which added an estimated 300 jobs. The construction and manufacturing sectors each gained 200 jobs, as did business services.
On the other hand, professional services lost 200 jobs — a decline, which Bailey attributed to the end of tax season.
“Those are all pretty in line with seasonal trends,” he said.
When reporting the state-level jobs numbers, the Employment Security Department posts the actual change in jobs and a seasonally adjusted figure, which is recalculated to exclude large changes in the workforce that reliably occur at the same point in each year, such as thousands of students seeking summer jobs in June.
County-level labor market numbers are not seasonally adjusted, but Bailey said his monthly report includes a seasonally adjusted estimate for Clark County that showed a net loss of 200 jobs for March.
The county has seen an overall slowing of job growth in the past year, Bailey said, although that doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend toward a recession in the near future — it could simply be a natural slowdown after so many years of economic recovery, or a side effect of economic uncertainty brought on by a year of tariffs and speculation about interest rates.
“Things have certainly slowed down, but we had really strong job growth for four to five years,” he said.
The county’s job growth rate for the past year was estimated at 1.7 percent, compared with 2.5 percent for the Portland metro area and Oregon overall, 2.4 percent for Washington and 1.6 percent for the U.S. overall.
Construction and mining continues to be Clark County’s fastest-growing sector when examined over the previous 12 months; as of the end of May, the sector had added 1,000 jobs in the past year, growing by 6.8 percent.
Leisure and hospitality, financial services and other services have also shown decent growth over the past year, according to Bailey’s report, while education and health services, professional and business services, government, and trade, transportation and utilities have all shown weaker growth.
The only sectors that have lost jobs in the past year are manufacturing and information services, which each show a decline of 200 jobs — the decline in manufacturing appears to be primarily due to losses in the paper manufacturing category, presumably due to layoffs last year at the Camas paper mill.
Looking toward the rest of the summer, Bailey said he expects to see a few different seasonal factors impact the labor market. Construction jobs will likely continue to grow, he said — they usually peak around September or October — and the food processing sector will likely show gains as well, along with leisure and hospitality.
School employment is likely to drop a bit heading into the summer, he said, and the retail sector might see a slight drop due to the recently announced closure of the Mill Plain Whole Foods Market, which is scheduled for mid-August.
