Oregon’s unemployment has hovered around 10% for more than a year. KBND money analyst Bill Valentine says last month's unemployment rate ticked up slightly, but that just means more people are actively looking for work. “This is the recovery, believe it or not. It’s going to be a series of little improvements with an occasional setback. And it's going to take several years for it to really feel like we are recovering. So I’ll call today’s unemployment numbers a minor victory; but one that puts us in the right direction.” In November in Oregon, payroll employment rose by 6300.