Difficult to Fill Job Openings in 2024
April 08, 2025What can employers do to find the workers they need? We looked for signals from our Oregon Job Vacancy Survey, which is designed to identify employers’ vacancies, which ones they have a difficult time filling, and to get a business perspective on why these jobs may be going unfilled. The Employment Department surveyed 16,300 private-sector employers with two or more employees over the course of 2024 and received responses from 4,600.
After the rapid job growth in 2021 and 2022 and record high levels of job vacancies, Oregon employers reported vacancy levels closer to what was seen prior to the pandemic. Private employers reported about 57,800 vacancies at any given time in 2024. Despite the return to levels seen in 2017 to 2019, with relatively low unemployment rates in 2024, employers still had difficulty filling 55% of those job vacancies.
Starting wages for job vacancies in 2024 averaged $25.37. Businesses reported difficulty filling 31,500 of their job vacancies, which accounted for 55% of the total, a slight decline from 61% seen in 2023 and a significant departure from 71% of job vacancies considered difficult to fill in 2021 and 2022.
Many characteristics of vacancies in 2024 were very similar to past findings. Four out of five job vacancies were for full-time positions, and more than nine out of 10 openings were for permanent positions, regardless of whether or not the vacancy was difficult to fill.
Difficult-to-fill vacancies had three high-level differences in 2024. Firstly, they paid a starting wage that averaged over $3 more per hour than vacancies filled without difficulty. Secondly, difficult-to-fill vacancies were far more likely to require previous work experience (69%) than job openings filled without difficulty (38%). Additionally, relatively few job vacancies that were not difficult to fill (32%) required education beyond high school, while nearly half (44%) of difficult-to-fill job vacancies did.
Employers reported difficulty in hiring for 79% of openings that required more than five years of experience, and 67% of vacancies requiring up to five years of experience. Job vacancies that required no previous experience were considered less difficult to fill, but that percentage was still over half (52%) of no experience required job vacancies. One way to increase your possible pool of applicants as a hiring employer is to reduce the requirements for your job listings.
Why Are Job Vacancies Difficult to Fill?
For each difficult-to-fill vacancy, employers offered open-ended responses to identify the primary challenge for the unfilled opening. Their responses were then sorted into 12 categories. Employers indicated that a lack of qualified candidates was the primary factor in more than a quarter (28%) of their challenging openings in 2024, with a lack of applicants as a close second reason (24%). While the number of job openings returned to more typical levels in 2024, the unemployment rate was still relatively low throughout the year, with an annual average of 4.2%. That meant there were an annual average of 92,800 unemployed persons in Oregon throughout 2024, with about 57,800 job openings. That meant that for every job vacancy, there were about two unemployed people.
In 2024, unemployment remained relatively low while job growth slowed or declined across most broad sectors of the economy. In a reversal from recent years, employers had the most difficulty getting qualified candidates for their positions. In the rapid recovery from the pandemic recession, a lack of applicants was the most common reason for difficulty filling positions in 2021, 2022, and 2023. It was the second most common reason in 2024.
Another heavily reported reason for difficulty filling positions in 2024 was a lack of work experience, representing 10% of difficult to fill vacancies. This was the highest percentage this reason has seen in the history of the survey. In the prior three years, lack of work experience was cited for between 4% and 5% of difficult to fill vacancies.
Rounding out the top reasons for difficult filling vacancies was unfavorable working conditions and low wages, each representing 8% of difficult to fill vacancies. Unfavorable working conditions - like part-time jobs, short hours, nontraditional shifts, and demanding physical labor - increased from accounting for 6% of difficult to fill vacancies in 2023 and 5% the two years prior. A larger percentage of businesses acknowledged that their wages weren’t competitive in 2024 than they did in the prior two years. In 2022 and 2023, noncompetitive wages represented 4% of difficult to fill reasons.
Among 2024 job vacancies where employers lacked qualified candidates, the most common occupations included:
- Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers
- Registered nurses
- Dental hygienists
- Automotive service technicians and mechanics
- Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses
Vacancies that lacked applicants included jobs like:
- Personal care aides
- Fast food and counter workers
- Maids and housekeeping cleaners
- Dental assistants
- Restaurant cooks
Top occupations among all the other difficult-to-fill vacancies included:
- Personal care aides
- Automotive service technicians and mechanics
- Preschool teachers, except special education
- Business operations specialists
- Fast food and counter workers
Overall, employers reported difficult-to-fill job vacancies in 397 different occupations in 2024. The top occupations shown in the table below reflect over one-fourth (28%) of the difficult-to-fill openings in 2024. Occupations with the largest number of hard-to-fill vacancies included personal care aides (1,400), heavy truck drivers (930), automotive service technicians and mechanics (880), and registered nurses (750).
Regions
Difficulty filling jobs hit all areas of the state in 2024, although it was higher in certain areas. Portland Metro employers reported the least difficulty. Still, over four out of ten of openings (43%) in Portland Metro were difficult, and since the area is the largest metro in the state, it accounted for 7,300 hard-to-fill jobs, 23% of the state total. Regions reporting the highest shares of difficult-to-fill vacancies included the East Cascades (74%), Eastern Oregon (69%), and Northwest Oregon (68%).
There wasn’t as much variation in average starting wages across the state as one might expect. Average starting wages for hard-to-fill jobs ranged from $23.50 per hour in Southwestern Oregon to nearly $30 per hour in the Portland Metro region. Portland Metro employers were more often recruiting for jobs that required education beyond high school (52%) and previous work experience (86%).
The level of job vacancies in 2021 and 2022 was above anything we’ve seen since the beginning of this survey in 2013 but vacancies have since returned to pre-pandemic levels. That said, many employers still experienced difficulty filling their job vacancies. Employers may need to consider adjusting their experience and education requirements where possible and providing more training on the job, or they may need to raise the wages (or some combination of pay and perks like benefits or other work flexibility) they offer in order to reach the experienced applicants and qualified candidates they’re seeking.