Lane County’s unemployment rate was 4.9% in August, up from last month and also up compared with August of last year, but there are bright spots in the local economy.
“Just because they’re higher, obviously that is a more concerning job market,” said Henry Fields, regional economist for Lane County. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that unemployment is the same as it was in April of 2020, or during the aftermath of the Great Recession. Those times, we’re looking more at like 8%, 10%, 12% unemployment, which is a really serious problem.”
While the Eugene-Springfield metro area had 800 fewer nonfarm jobs than last August, it saw an increase of 1,600 jobs in the last month. Most of the gains came in health care, which grew by 1,500 jobs in the past year…