Number of jobs in Lane County holds steady, but types of jobs are changing

Lane County reached its high point in employment in February 2020 — when it had 166,400 jobs. 

Yet over the next two months, as the pandemic shut down normal business operations across the country, the county’s job count plunged to a low of 140,500 jobs, a decline of 15%. It took until 2025 for jobs in the county to cross the 166,000 mark again, and since then, the number of jobs has remained mostly flat, and even fallen slightly.

Henry Fields, Lane County economist for the Oregon Employment Department, says the job market since the pandemic has remained a story of recovery, not growth. 

​“There is no question, the last couple of years have seen tepid to basically no job growth,” Fields said. “We kind of had a quick recovery in the initial period post-COVID, and now we’ve been at about the same number of jobs in the last couple of years.”

​In December, Lane County had 164,600 jobs, 1,800 fewer than the pre-pandemic peak.

The local trend contrasts with the national job market, which has grown by roughly 5%, which amounts to an additional 7.234 million jobs, since the pandemic.

A shift in kinds of jobs 

​Fields said employment numbers alone aren’t a true measure of economic health, however. Under the surface, the type of industries in Lane County is going through a dramatic shift.

Locally, health care and financial services have grown sharply since 2019. Health care gained 1,300 jobs, matching national trends. Financial services increased by 700 jobs. 

Other areas, however, such as administrative and support services — a term that encompasses business services such as call centers, employment services or travel agencies — saw a steep loss of 1,900 jobs. Retail employment also decreased by 1,300 since pre-pandemic levels.

​The factors behind these shifts are wide-ranging and difficult to pin down, as trends in many industries are tied to national economic forces outside any one area’s direct control.

​Health care, the county’s fastest-growing industry, is driven by an aging population with rising health needs. The drop in retail work is likely tied to AI automation services replacing some human jobs, Fields said. Local education cuts can be attributed to enrollment declines at local schools and universities.

While some industry changes are driven by broader economic forces, local business and economic development leaders try to guide growth in Lane County by supporting industries like technology and biosciences — selected for their potential to bring high-wage occupations to the area.

Matt Sayre, executive director of Eugene-based Collaborative Economic Development Oregon, leads tours for college students at local tech companies, hosts events for local businesses and works with entrepreneurs to help them network and seek funding.

Sayre says recruitment efforts focused on these targeted tech and science industries would improve the local economy.

​“Downstream challenges that are exacerbated by low-paying occupations — things like affordability of housing, affordability of education, child care — all of those problems are very real and palpable,” Sayre said. “But they are lessened when local people are able to access good-paying jobs.”

Finding qualified workers

Whether these positions can be filled with qualified candidates, however, is another question. 

While employment in health care and technology fields are growing, the educational requirements for these roles differ from those in shrinking industries, such as retail or call center work. Workers who are pushed out of these industries won’t be able to seamlessly switch to these new open roles.

​“Those are industries that tend to have lower educational requirements, and if the jobs that are in demand have higher or more specific educational requirements, that’s going to cause an additional amount of disconnect between those,” Fields said. “Even if those folks are able to retrain, for those that take time, that takes aptitude in a certain skill set.”

​This skill set mismatch is evident in the local job market. In 2024, Lane County employers reported that nearly half of their job openings were hard to fill.

​At the moment, higher education institutions like the University of Oregon, Lane Community College and Bushnell University play the role of local education training centers, and officials at each are watching the employment trends, Sayre said.

​“You can point to Lane Community College, increasing capacity in the fields of construction, you can point to Bushnell making big moves in increasing educational opportunities for the next generation of health care workers,” Sayre said. “But it’s also true that there’s a lot of work to be done.”