portland worksource.jpg

Kenneth Schmidt listens during a November 2011 hiring event for United Parcel Service at WorkSource Oregon in Portland. Transportation companies such as UPS had among the most job vacancies this fall, tied to the busy holiday shopping and shipping season.

(The Associated Press)

A new survey shows Oregon's private sector had more vacant jobs this past fall than in any other year since the recession. But the competition remains tight for the unemployed.

Out-of-work Oregonians outnumbered private-sector job vacancies by a 4-to-1 margin in October, according to

released Tuesday by the Oregon Employment Department. That compares with a 3-to-1 ratio nationwide.

Oregon businesses and nonprofits had 32,300 vacancies in October. Of course, just because the openings exist, they don't necessarily lead to new jobs and hiring, as most jobseekers can tell you.

Employers say it's increasingly tough to find qualified workers. More than one-half of the fall openings were classified as "difficult to fill," up from 44 percent of openings in fall 2012.

The jobs market has improved slightly since then, when

The scales were even more off balance in fall 2011, with six people out of work competing for every one vacancy.

There's still a disproportionate share of jobseekers compared to openings, but the vacancies that do exist are spread out across the state. Portland-area employers had about two-fifths of the fall 2013 positions, roughly equal to the metro area's share of total employment in the state. Central Oregon had far fewer vacancies, about 1,600. The count was good news for the region nonetheless, because it was up 50 percent compared to falll 2012.

In the fall 2013 survey, two-thirds of the vacant jobs were full-time. The openings were concentrated among office- and health care-support jobs and transportation-related jobs.

Vacancies in the latter sector were up because of the holidays.

About 133,100 were out of work in October, the month employers were surveyed. At the time, the state's unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. The

though it fell in part because more people retired out of the workforce or chose to exit it for some other reason.

State analysts will issue December hiring and unemployment data Jan. 22.

--Molly Young