Another 430 Lincoln County residents filed unemployment claims last week, bringing the total to 3,246 since statewide COVID-19 restrictions went into place in mid-March.
The number of initial claims in Lincoln County for the week ending April 18 was dramatically smaller than the previous two weeks, but still a staggering amount of the county’s total nonfarm workforce of nearly 18,000 people. Some 744 Lincoln County workers filed for employment the previous week and 1,076 the week before that.
The new total shows that 18 percent of Lincoln County’s workforce have lost their jobs since early March.
Erik Knoder, a regional economist in the Oregon Employment Department’s Newport office, said the number of new Lincoln County claims in the past five weeks is already greater than the estimated peak number of unemployed — 2,824 — during the height of the Great Recession in March 2009.
Statewide, the Oregon Employment Department on Thursday said 37,000 Oregonians filed new jobless claims last week, bringing total job losses over the five weeks of the coronavirus outbreak to 334,000. That’s 17 percent of the state’s workforce.
The number of new claims actually fell for the second week in a row but remains at a historic level. The Oregonian newspaper said claims may spike again in the coming weeks as the state begins processing filings for self-employed workers and contractors, who hadn’t previously been eligible for jobless benefits.
Lincoln County is especially hard hit because of its reliance on tourism, which has been the employment sector most impacted by restrictions on travel. Lincoln County has been the hardest hit county in Oregon in the percentage of its workers suddenly losing their jobs because of the COVID-19 crisis.
Of Lincoln County’s total unemployment claims since March 14, some 1,371 have been in the hospitality industry and another 388 in retail, for a total of 1,759 – half of all the claims in the county.
The third largest category of new unemployment claims continues to be in the health care industry, with 52 claims filed last week for a five-week total of 257.
A complete report on the state agency’s weekly unemployment claims are available on its website.
