Lack of housing leads to hiring woes for Central Oregon businesses, study finds

In Bend, it’s not unusual to seek out many eating places closed on Monday and lengthy wait occasions at sure companies.

Employers in Bend are discovering it more and more troublesome to fill empty positions and the area’s excessive value of housing is usually a direct issue, in accordance with a brand new examine produced by the Bend Chamber of Commerce.

Greater than 200 native companies responded to the survey, with 81% saying that the sky-high value of housing in Bend has made it troublesome to rent staff.

Bend Chamber of Commerce CEO Katy Brooks mentioned the problem has change into extra pronounced lately as costs proceed to balloon. Such industries as retail leisure — which traditionally pay decrease wages and comprise massive swaths of Bend’s tourism financial system — have been notably exhausting hit.

“Companies merely can’t appeal to individuals to come back to Bend and reside right here if they’ll’t both discover a place that’s open or afford anyplace that’s open,” Brooks mentioned.

In some circumstances, excessive housing prices have pressured some companies in Bend to close down altogether, in accordance with Brooks. OPB referred to as homeowners of three companies that not too long ago shut down in Bend, all of which didn’t reply earlier than publication.

Rising prices for housing are usually not a scenario distinctive to Bend, and even Oregon. Costs for properties and leases nationally surged over the previous two years as demand elevated, a scenario worsened most not too long ago by inflation.

State economist Damon Runberg, who’s primarily based in Bend, mentioned town is a microcosm of how housing straight impacts different areas of the financial system. The more cash residents must pay on housing, he mentioned, the much less they’ll spend on leisure and on different objects.

Provided that a lot of Bend’s tourism financial system has historically relied on paying decrease wages, it’s an issue Runberg expects may take years to resolve.

“That is such a significant drawback proper now that even a minor correction may not be sufficient to resolve the affordability disaster for these employers and the employees,” Runberg mentioned.

Nevertheless, Runberg mentioned the big variety of properties and residences underneath development within the metropolis may slowly ease costs.

A kind of entities struggling to rent is the Metropolis of Bend. Tiana Morris, with Bend’s human sources division, instructed OPB that hiring for sure positions has been troublesome since working remotely isn’t an possibility for a lot of positions. She estimated that, at sure factors this yr, candidates rejected round 10% of job provides attributable to relocation points.

“I might say there’s no division that’s exempt,” Morris mentioned. “We really feel it in all places.”

For personal companies, the battle to fill empty positions is resulting in a subsequent loss in revenues. Sixty-seven % of companies who responded to the chamber of commerce survey mentioned their revenues decreased due to their incapacity to rent new workers.

A scarcity of accessible staff is nothing new for Central Oregon. Through the summer time, job openings vastly exceeded the variety of unemployed staff, that means some jobs took weeks to fill. It coincided with what was nationally simplified as “nice resignation,” the notion that many had been sluggish to return to the workforce as COVID-19 restrictions started to subside.

However the authors of the survey mentioned the fact is extra difficult. The report mentioned a decent labor market is anticipated to ease, however that the reasonably priced housing disaster is extra systemic and will hinder companies for years to come back.

And whereas Bend has a repute as a fast-growing metropolis, an absence of housing may hinder that. Runberg mentioned Bend’s inhabitants grew sooner than different cities in the course of the pandemic, however it was slower than within the years simply earlier than COVID-19.

Housing, he mentioned, may very well be the ceiling that tempers Central Oregon’s surging inhabitants.