The local Oregon Employment Department office this morning had 94 jobs listings, compared with only 58 a couple of months ago. That makes Coos County a bright spot in some ways, as counties across Oregon report more people out of work.

“They’re not really new jobs. They’re replacement openings,” local manager Kathie Creasey said.

“The slowdown has been across a variety of industries,” state economist Guy Tauer said. “Construction, wood products, leisure and hospitality, Indian tribal government.”

Coos County, however, over the years has diversified and it seems to have helped, economists say.

A couple of sectors, professional and business services and retail trade, showed gains of 90 and 80 jobs.

Tauer said what helps Coos County is that it has more diversified employment options, with its combination of golfing and tourism and wood manufacturing and retail jobs. He added that not all the figures were in at the time his January report was released and there may be changes in coming weeks.

Coos County’s unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 12.6 percent in a year, up from 8.3 percent in January 2008. Curry and Douglas counties’ rates are even higher, at 13.8 and a whopping 16.5 percent respectively, the fourth highest in the state.

“No one county has been immune,” said Rob Abbott, the department’s workforce analyst for Coos, Curry and Douglas counties. “I’ve seen several businesses close directly due to the financial market collapse in all three counties.”

But, Coos County has fared better than its neighbors.

“It’s weathered it better than the other two,” he said.

Coos County lost more than 600 jobs in December, according to the employment department information. These were mostly due to seasonal employment trends in retail trade, leisure and hospitality and local education. Over the month, manufacturing employment fell by 120 jobs, 90 due to the decline in wood manufacturing.

Creasey said the people she’s seeing lately are more desperate — and less choosy.

“Some have exhausted their claims and they’re on the emergency unemployment benefit,” Creasey said. “People are applying for anything they might qualify for.”

“Boom or bust” Curry County was most affected by the housing crunch, Tauer said. The county’s unemployment rate rose 5.4 percent in a year, and almost 2 percent in a month.

“Curry County, in part, was on a building spree for a while,” Abbott said. “Now that that has slowed or come to a halt, what we have are construction falls.”

Curry County employment dipped 130 jobs in January, according to Worksource Oregon. Most of the jobs over the month were lost in construction, retail trade and accommodations and food service. The county lost 220 jobs over the year, mostly in construction and manufacturing.

The cutback in the salmon season hasn’t helped either.

Douglas County’s jobless rate was up by 3.5 percent from December, and up by almost 7 percent from January a year ago. The three counties in Oregon that have higher unemployment rates were Crook, Grant and Harney counties, at 18.2, 19.3 and 19.7 percent.

Douglas County was hammered by losses in wood manufacturing, Tauer said.

“There’s just not a lot of jobs coming in to replace those,” Tauer said.

Oregon’s average unemployment rate was up 2.1 percent from December and rose from 6 percent in January 2008 to 10.9 percent this January. The nation’s rate jumped almost 1.5 percent from December to January, and went from 5.4 percent to 8.5 percent over the year.

Tauer surmises people won’t see an upturn in jobs until the stimulus package takes hold, until there is an increase in consumer confidence and an uptick in the stock market.

“It’s going to be tough to see some kind of a turn around, but at some point in the future, it will turn around,” Tauer said.