Oregon Employment Department. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Nursing homes are continuing to lose workers in Oregon even as other health care sectors in the state have picked up more employees after shedding jobs in the early months of the pandemic.
As of August, the Oregon Employment Department reported outpatient care jobs increased by 3,100 during the past year, the department wrote in a Wednesday news release. Hospitals statewide gained 300 jobs.
Employment at nursing and residential care facilities declined by 1,300 jobs in the past year.
Oregon’s health care employment is largely in keeping with national trends, the news release said. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that outpatient health care services nationwide have recovered 99.7% of jobs lost in spring 2020, with 4,700 remaining.
Hospitals nationwide are 93,000 jobs short of February 2020 employment and have recovered 28% of jobs lost during the pandemic. Nursing and residential care facilities have continued to lose jobs since the pandemic started, losing 426,000 jobs during the recession.
The state employment department last week paid around $28 million in benefits to 30,000 Oregonians, the news release said.
The department dished out $11 billion in benefits to more than 620,000 people from March 15, 2020 to Oct. 9, 2021.
Oregon’s unemployment rate in August was 4.9%, down 0.3 percentage points from July, according to employment department data. 107,417 Oregonians were unemployed in August, dropping by 6,519 from July.
-Ardeshir Tabrizian
