World Photo by Madeline Steege Dr. Wayne Murray, 72, of Coos Bay, helps a customer at City Subs, 149 N. Fourth St. Murray retired from the medical practice a decade ago, only to take a job at City Subs last year. He emerged from retirement to alleviate boredom, he said.

Blessings tend to be mixed, and that certainly seems to be the case with Coos County's economy.

For the past two months, unemployment rates have been at their lowest point since at least 1990, reaching 6.3 percent in May. But the source of these healthy numbers, some analysts say, is that more retirement-aged people are moving into the area as working-aged people vacate it.

“The problem is that Coos and Curry counties are essentially becoming retirement communities,” said Jeremiah Huber, Brookings branch manager of Cardinal Employment Services. “In the past few years, it's become mind-boggling how few younger, working-aged people there are to recruit from in the area. Older people have been moving in and younger, working-age people have been leaving for a while now, but only in the past year or so has it really started to hit home.”

According to Mo Aakre, services coordinator for South Coast Business Employment Corp., a nonprofit employment agency, the area is facing a shortage of workers in nearly every sector, from the health care industry to local manufacturing.

“We simply do not have enough working-age people in the area to meet the current labor market,” said Aakre. “I've been in this business for about 20 years, and I can say that this is very new. Business people tell me that they're consistently having a very, very difficult time finding workers.”

One of the main reasons for this, said Huber, is the area's escalating housing prices. According to Tamara Houghton, data analyst Coos County Assessor's Office, housing prices rose about 25 percent between January 2005 and 2006, between 20 and 25 percent the year before that, and about 15 percent between 2003 and 2004. These rises were unusually large, she said, and “the reason for a lot of this is the immigration of retirees into the area. The Baby Boomers are starting to retire, and they've got money.”

“It's getting harder and harder for a young person to be able to afford a house in the area, due to all the retirees moving in,” said Huber. “That's one of the main reasons they're going elsewhere. That, and the area's retired atmosphere. There are not a lot of young people out there who like to take things mellow and quiet.”

In response to the shortage, many employers, according to Aakre and Huber, are increasingly hiring older workers, usually on a part-time basis.

“We find a lot of industries are looking towards the older generations, the people they normally wouldn't really look at, for employees,” said Huber. “When it comes to part-time jobs, we find that many of them are actually looking for an opportunity to leave retirement, to do something. And they can be a lot more punctual and dependable than younger workers.”

Aakre said that there was no limit to the jobs older people can do, saying that “we've got people running marathons at ages 60 and 70, so I think that many of them can handle labor-related jobs.”

One sector that is increasingly hiring older workers is health care services, an industry that coincidentally has been growing in the area due to the influx of seniors. According to Chris Coomey, the administrator of Inland Point Assisted Living home in North Bend, many private and public health care providers are having a tough time finding qualified workers, particularly nurses.

In particular, she said the local offices of the Department of Human Services' Senior and People with Disabilities division “are having a real hard time of it.” Cindy Haffman, a supervisor for DHS's local Senior and People with Disabilities division, confirmed this assessment.

“We have a terrible time finding nurses right now, and unfortunately, I think we're also on an upswing demand-wise with the Baby Boomer generation getting older,” said Haffman. “In the past, finding employees hasn't been a problem. We used to have five or six qualified applicants per available job, and we'd have to scratch our heads, trying to figure out who to hire. Now it's often the case that we'll take older workers more than we usually would, or less-qualified applicants. ... I'm hoping things start evening out soon.”

According to a study by DHS, 19 percent of Coos County residents are over the age of 65, and that is 6 percent higher than the state average. Between 2000 and 2005, the growth rate of seniors in Coos County was 1 percent. According to the DHS study, between 2005 and 2015 that rate will be 18 percent.

“Retired people are moving here to build their dream homes, but at some point in the near future, the contractors are going have their plates filled, and won't have enough young guys around to do the work,” said Huber. “Who's going to build the dream houses then?”