A recent survey shows that there are six unemployed workers for every job opening in Oregon.
Richard Belton is one of over 176 thousand Oregonians looking for work…but there are only about 30 thousand openings.
“I don’t know, it’s just pretty hard in Klamath – there’s just not a lot of jobs to look for.”
Klamath County’s jobless rate now stands at 11.9 percent. Randy Norris of Worksource Klamath notes that many are out of work for the first time.
“There are a lot of highly qualified people. Some of them, for the first time coming to our offices – and that’s a little shock for them.
Norris notes that there are some jobs available.
“We have about 206 listings, and about 151 of them are new this month.”
But not everyone qualifies. About three-quarters of the jobs require previous experience, and about a third require some kind of certification, or license. Nearly a fifth of the job vacancies are in health care, or social services.
But Richard Belton says he’s open for anything…
“Part time, full time, anything available – I’ll take anything I can get right now. Just trying to get a little bit of money.”
The six-to-one worker to job ratio is actually an improvement over last year, when the ratio was six and a half to one.
Oregon’s unemployment rate currently stands at 8.9 percent. New figures will be released on Tuesday.
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