Park Avenue West Tower - 8
Construction continued earlier this summer on the Park Avenue West Tower in downtown Portland. After struggling to recover, the industry is now adding jobs faster than any other in the Portland area.
(Mark Graves/The Oregonian)
Portland gained jobs more rapidly than Seattle, San Francisco -- and most other major U.S. metro areas in the past year.
Portland's employment base expanded 3.1 percent from June 2013 to June 2014, the area's fastest annual growth rate in nine years.
In fact, the past year marked only the second stretch since the mid-1990s that job growth exceeded 3 percent in Portland, said Christian Kaylor, a state workforce analyst.
Only seven of the 50 largest U.S. metros grew more quickly, according to a comparison of the latest federal hiring data compiled by Kaylor.
Houston and Las Vegas grew at the same rate as Portland. The three shared the eighth-fastest hiring rate in the U.S.
Only one major city -- Raleigh, N.C. -- expanded beyond 4 percent over the year. Seven metros, including Kansas City, Virginia Beach and Detroit, were on the opposite end of the spectrum. None expanded more than 1 percent between June 2013 and June 2014.
Portland edged San Francisco and Seattle, but fell below two other other cities that often draw comparisons, Austin and San Jose.
In terms of population, Portland lands in the middle of the 50 largest metro areas, at 24th.
All of the metro area's key sectors have grown in the past year, Kaylor said. But the construction industry is adding new jobs almost twice as fast as any other, expanding 8.1 percent for the year.
Nearly five years since the Great Recession, Oregon still hasn't recovered all the jobs lost in the downturn. But Portland now has more jobs than it did before the recession. The area has picked up 3,000 new jobs, on average, every month since January.
When the state lost an estimated 4,300 jobs in June, the Portland area still managed to pick up 1,000.
"Job growth is not only continuing, it's accelerating," Kaylor said in his recent monthly
Unemployment in the seven-county Portland metro area is 6.1 percent, and has been near that mark since April. The flatlining rate suggests job seekers are starting to come back into the labor market as prospects improve.
The statewide unemployment rate hasn't changed much in recent months, either. At 6.8 percent, it remains higher than the Portland-metro rate.
Analysts consider the Portland metro area to be Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Yamhill and Columbia counties; plus Skamania and Clark counties in Washington.
--Molly Young