Employment on South Coast, May 28

Oregon Employment Dept. release – Coos County total payroll employment plunged by an estimated 2,950 jobs in April, or a decline of 13.0 percent, about one out of seven payroll jobs county-wide. The leisure and hospitality sector bore the largest brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic-related job losses. No published industry sector was spared in the loss of jobs. The largest monthly declines were in sectors where we have seen the largest numbers of weekly initial unemployment insurance claims filed: leisure and hospitality (-1,290); private educational and health services (-480); professional and business services (-380); and retail trade (-180). Job losses totaled100 in construction and 80 in manufacturing. All other sectors saw varying degrees of losses, a testament to the deep contraction of economic activity. The over-the-month losses in the leisure and hospitality sector represent more than 40 percent of the prior month’s employment. Curry County trends were similar, with losses totaling 1,000 payroll jobs, a 15.4 percent decline. Leisure and hospitality (-480); private education and health services (-170); retail trade (-80); and other services (-40) saw losses as these sectors were some of the ones impacted by executive orders and the pandemic during the first waves of the economic impact. Over the past year, payroll employment in both Coos and Curry Counties declined by a similar total as the April over-the-month declines. Since April 2019, estimates show the largest job losses were in many of the same industries where we saw employment declines begin as a trickle in March and hit like a tsunami in April. But the take away is there are essentially no published private-sector industries showing either over-the-month, or over-the-year gains at the South Coast. The exceptions are a few food and beverage store jobs in Coos County and a few manufacturing jobs added in Curry County. With the April data we saw the brunt of the executive orders and global COVID-19 impacts on Oregon’s payroll employment. As different industries resume operations and parts of the state begin reopening their economies in different stages, jobs may come back at varied rates across industries and Oregon’s geographies as well. But any predictions are mostly conjecture at this point.