Business Formation and Business Employment Dynamics in Oregon
February 05, 2026While there are always businesses that are closing, businesses are forming and opening too. Business formations have increased recently after taking a slight pause during the onset of the pandemic recession. Applications for new businesses in Oregon without planned wages ranged between about 2,000 and 3,000 in the three years prior to the pandemic. In April 2020, those new business applications fell to 2,097 and then recovered to 3,284 by July 2020. Applications for businesses without planned wages trended upward through September 2023, peaking at 5,198. Since then, applications have edged down but remain strong through July 2025. The number of total business applications with planned wages has remained mostly steady, ranging between about 500 and 700 each month since about 2010. In July 2025, there were 577 Oregon business applications with planned wages and 4,256 without planned wages.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics (BED) data give more insight into job change by businesses that are either opening, closing, expanding, or contracting. Data are now available through the first quarter of 2025. BED statistics track changes in employment at the establishment level, revealing the dynamics underlying net changes in employment. These data include the number and rates of gross jobs gained at opening and expanding establishments, as well as the number and rates of gross jobs lost by closing and contracting establishments. Since this data is compiled from payroll jobs covered by unemployment insurance, it does not capture all establishments and workers, with the major exclusions being self-employed workers, religious organizations, most agricultural workers on small farms, all members of the Armed Forces, elected officials in most states, most employees of railroads, some domestic workers, most student workers at schools, and employees of certain nonprofit organizations.
Gross job gains and gross job losses do not include government employees, private households, and establishments with zero employment. BED measures job changes at the establishment level, providing a picture of the dynamics underlying the aggregate net employment growth statistics. They do not account for employment changes within the establishment that may, for example, keep its employment constant. The gross job gain and gross job loss statistics are particularly useful in decomposing the forces behind net changes in employment. There are four measures available from the BED data: openings, expansions, closings, and contractions.
Openings: Either establishments with positive third-month employment for the first time in the current quarter, with no links to the prior quarter, or with positive third-month employment in the current quarter following zero employment in the previous quarter.
Expansions: Establishments with positive employment in the third month in both the previous and current quarters, with a net increase in employment over this period.
Closings: Either establishments with positive third-month employment in the previous quarter, with no positive employment reported in the current quarter, or with positive third-month employment in the previous quarter followed by zero employment in the current quarter.
Contractions: Establishments with positive employment in the third month in both the previous and current quarters, with a net decrease in employment over this period.
In the early days of the pandemic, Oregon had a net employment loss of 204,971 in the second quarter of 2020. That is the difference between total gross job gains from expansions and openings and total gross job losses from contractions and closures. Comparing the second quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2019, jobs lost by business contractions nearly tripled, going from 81,330 to more than 235,300. Jobs lost from business closures more than doubled over that year, from 17,907 to reach 51,251 during the second quarter of 2020. Even during the pandemic, jobs were added at opening establishments – 16,639 in the second quarter of 2020, a slight loss of 1.4% from the 16,869 jobs gained from opening establishments during the second quarter of 2019. Job gains from establishment expansions declined more over that year, from 88,691 jobs in the second quarter of 2019 to 64,945 jobs in the second quarter of 2020.
The rebound in jobs that began in the third quarter of 2020 generally continued through the first quarter of 2023. Since then, losses in the second quarter of 2023 totaled 4,601, and the third quarter saw a net loss of 11,654. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Oregon had a net negative change of 5,984 private-sector jobs, with expanding and opening establishments adding 105,056 jobs while closing and contracting establishments shed 111,040 jobs. During the past 18 quarters, job gains have outpaced job losses in 13 of those quarters in Oregon.
The leisure and hospitality sector remains among the most significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and is slow to recover those lost jobs. Now over five years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic recession struck a blow to the economy, and leisure and hospitality employment is still down 4,800 jobs, or -2.3%, from its pre-pandemic zenith. The trend for gross job gains and losses for the leisure and hospitality industry mirrors the overall trend but shows the recession’s outsized impact on this industry.
The distribution of gross job losses in the leisure and hospitality sector shows that during the worst quarter of the pandemic recession, there were 70,731 jobs lost in contracting establishments and 20,753 jobs lost at closing establishments. The leisure and hospitality industry accounted for about 30% of Oregon’s private-sector job losses from contracting establishments and about 40% of Oregon’s total private-sector losses from closing establishments during the second quarter of 2020. Job losses due to closures are the jobs that garner the most worry. Employers were repeatedly challenged during the pandemic as business practices shifted, temporary closures ensued, and rapid reopening meant a high level of competition for available workers. For the most recent three years of BED data available, leisure and hospitality had net job gains until the third quarters of 2023 and 2024, when losses outpaced gains by 3,330 and 3,088 jobs, respectively.
Business Employment Dynamics data is another tool to help us understand if we are rebuilding the economy with employment from new establishments or if it is the expansion of existing establishments driving the net employment change. For more information, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Business Employment Dynamics homepage.