College students might not be the only ones struggling to make enough money to pay for expenses without some form of financial support.
Only 63% of all jobs in Oregon pay enough for a single adult to cover the living wage for that situation – which is $11.38 per hour, 40 hours per week, according to a recent report from the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations.
With the addition of children to the equation, the discrepancy is larger. For an adult with one child in Oregon, the cost of living requires an $18.48 hourly wage, the report said. Only 31% of the same jobs cover that expense.
The study, performed throughout the Northwest in collaboration with the public interest group Oregon Action, includes data from Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Of those, the report lists Oregon as having the highest cost of living in every category.
Clayborn Collins, president of Oregon Action’s Portland chapter, said there is also a resulting job gap in the state, meaning there are more people seeking jobs than there are positions to fill. All of these trends, he said, are somewhat related to the larger economic climate in the state.
“I think that as inflation goes up, the job gap gets wider,” Collins said. “The living wage goes up.”
For college students, finding a job can be even more difficult, as employers are often turned off by a constantly changing schedule to accommodate.
University sophomore Elizabeth Shackelford, who landed a job at the University Bookstore last year, said many of her friends were not as fortunate as she was in looking for work while taking classes.
“I was actually pretty lucky,” Shackelford said. “I found a job here because it’s pretty flexible, and it’s close to campus.”
Shackelford said some students, such as art and architecture majors, have to incur extra expenses for supplies during class projects.
“It can be tough going through school and trying to support yourself,” she said.
That job gap can result in as many as five job-seekers applying for the same position, Collins said, which can affect how much employers pay in the first place.
“At that ratio, how many employers do you think are going to pay $11.38 per hour? They can lower the wage if they want to, and pay eight or nine dollars per hour,” he said. “The job gap is really meant to show people and employers that paying less wages was not really helping the economy.”
The relatively large job gap described in the report includes a larger group than more traditional state figures do. There were 97,677 unemployed workers in Oregon in December according to the Oregon Employment Department, but the NWFCO report lists the number of “job-seekers” as more than 208,000. That’s because the recent report includes people working part-time jobs and applying for others, and those not in the work force because of injury or inability to work, said NWFCO representative Gerald Smith.
However, a significant job gap might not necessarily mean a shortage of jobs, said University economics professor Tim Duy. He said a job gap might simply result from a mismatch between the skills of workers and the skills required for open positions.
Duy also pointed out that most people don’t make a lot when they first enter the workforce.
“If you have somebody that is right out of high school with no skills, they’re probably not going to be making a living wage,” he said.
For students and job-seekers who aren’t able to find work, Collins said much of the responsibility lies with businesses, though there are many other factors contributing to the job discrepancy in the first place.
“Business expansion is very important in this process. That creates jobs,” he said. “Business expansion is the only true answer to the job gap.”
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LIVING WAGES IN OREGON:
For a single adult with no children – $11.38 per hour
For a single adult with one child – $18.48 per hour
For a single adult with two children – $23.40 per hour
For two adults (one working) with one child – $22.34 per hour