Employers are struggling to fill vacant positions in booming Central Oregon city.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Employers are struggling to fill vacant positions in the booming central region of Oregon.
The dynamic means higher wages for workers, but soaring home prices in the Bend metropolitan area makes it harder for employers to recruit worthy prospects.
An Employment Department senior economic analyst, Gail Krumenauer, drawing on a 2014 survey of Oregon employers, found 2,300 jobs hard to fill in the 10-county region. Employers reported they could find no applicants at all for 621 of those jobs and no qualified applicants for 598 of them, according to Krumenauer’s report released earlier this month.
Construction workers, among the occupations hard to fill, fit into both categories. Workers still feel the sting of the housing bust in Central Oregon and are reluctant to return; some are busy on jobs in the Willamette Valley and elsewhere, anyway.
(SOURCE: Bend Bulletin)
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