Closing the gap.

Byline: The Register-Guard

At any one point in time last year, Oregon employers had 48,140 jobs to fill, according to the state Employment Department's latest Job Vacancy Survey, more than two-thirds of which required no more than a high school diploma - with 31 percent not even requiring that. However, although the average hourly wage for all vacant jobs was close to $16 per hour, slightly more than half paid less than that.

The state surveyed 11,900 employers for the report, which showed only a slight increase in vacancies over the year before. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of vacancies jumped 40 percent, to 44,800 from 32,000. The department said the "smoothing out of the job vacancy trend is consistent with general strength in Oregon's economy."

Lane County's unemployment rate dropped by more than 1 percentage point last year, to 5.5 percent in December, but still showed nearly 5,000 job vacancies at any one point in time, according to the state survey, about 10 percent of the state total. Two-thirds of the vacancies were in Multnomah and Washington counties in the Portland area.

Statewide, the largest number of vacancies - 2,227 - was among "heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers," with employers saying 87 percent of the positions were difficult to fill, despite the fact that nearly 90 percent of the jobs were permanent full-time positions. A similar shortage was reported for farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery and greenhouse workers, although fewer than 10 percent of those positions were permanent.

Brian Rooney, local economist with the Employment Department, told The Register-Guard last fall that many of the vacant jobs were in the service industry, which includes typically low-paying retail, restaurant, leisure and hospitality jobs. But he said not all the vacant jobs are low-paying, citing annual wage rates of $50,000 or more in many health care, manufacturing and state education jobs in Lane County.

One of the curiosities in the job vacancy report is that the second-largest number of job openings was for "personal care aides," more than 60 percent of which employers reported being difficult to fill. The report doesn't break out the wages for those positions but they're grouped under "health care and social assistance," where the average annual wage was reported to be nearly $31,000, almost 28 percent above last year's federal poverty level for a family of four.

The report also notes that experience requirements appear to be a bigger impediment to getting hired than level of education. Only 12 percent of the 2015 vacancies required a college degree but 60 percent required previous job experience.

The recent boost in the state's minimum wage should help make many service industry jobs more attractive to potential employees but employers needing to fill vacancies may want to take a closer look at their experience requirements and maybe lower their expectations or provide more on-the-job training. They might also look at ways to spread their nets wider, including reaching out to schools.