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Multnomah County, Oregon’s largest county and home to Portland, has lagged the state and the nation in jobs for the past 12 months, according to figures from the Oregon Employment Department.
Oregon added 8,700 non-farm jobs, growing by 0.4%, in the year ended June 30, according to monthly data distributed by Jake Procino, economist for Multnomah County at the state employment office. Payrolls in Multnomah County, by comparison, fell 5,100, or 1%, during the same period.
Notices required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act show some large layoffs in Multnomah County in the past year, including 87 jobs cut when the Albertsons on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway closed in April. Powin LLC, the battery company headquartered in Tualatin, had an office in Portland, where some of its 245 employees worked before the company went bankrupt last month.
A debate has been raging in the Portland City Council and at the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners about whether high taxes are chasing wealthy people and large companies out of town.
Gov. Tina Kotek wrote to County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson on June 10, asking her to reconsider the tax on high earners that funds Preschool for All because, she said, it was prompting wealthy people to leave the county, hurting Oregon’s tax base.
Some members of the Portland City Council, meantime, are calling for more taxes on the wealthy to pay for things like free garbage pickup, fareless buses and trains, and government-run grocery stores with price controls to keep inflation at bay.
The new data can only intensify that philosophical disagreement.
Portland, once one of the most economically vibrant cities in the U.S., now lags towns of similar size, Procino showed in his monthly email. Job growth in the Portland metro area, which goes beyond Multnomah County, was flat in the year ended May 31, 2025. By contrast, payrolls grew 2.4% in Salt Lake City, 2.1% in San Antonio, and 1.2% in Pittsburgh. Employment fell in just nine of the 50 metro areas Procino listed.
Things might get worse before they get better. Earlier this month, Fred Meyer filed a WARN notice saying that it planned to lay off all 249 workers at its Gateway store when it closes the location later this year.
