My Unemployment Rate

Just how bad is my American dream? When I graduated from the University of Oregon last June, the Oregon unemployment rate was right around 5.9 percent. In the 10 months of my post-college life, the unemployment rate has nearly double and is now 10.8 percent. In the month of February there were 21,700 less jobs in the state of Oregon than there was in January.

Between February 2008 and February 2009:

• The construction industry has cut 17,200 jobs (-17.3 percent of the workforce)
• The Manufacturing industry has cut 25,000 jobs (-12.4 percent of the work force)
• The Finance industry has cut 7,300 jobs (-7 percent of the work force)

The only two industries that continue to see increases are:

• Government has increased 6,200 jobs (+2.1 percent of the workforce)
• Private educational and health service has increased 6,700 jobs (3.1 percent of the workforce)

So what does this mean for someone in my situation? Of the 3.7 million people who are currently living in the state of Oregon, nearly 400,000 of them are unemployed. In the time since I graduated from college, I’ve become twice as likely to be unemployed in the state of Oregon. At the rate things are going, I’m going to have to change the name of this blog to My American Nightmare.