Broad-based job growth brought Oregon’s unemployment rate down in January to seven percent.

The rate dropped from 7.1 percent.

It’s been trending down for the last four-and-a-half years.

While January’s gains were weak, employment growth for the last year has been strong.

David Cooke, an economist with the Oregon Employment Department, says seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll is up 2.6 percent.

“Now that’s pretty strong growth compared to growth that we saw prior to that, that was only slightly above 1 percent growth on an annual basis. So the job gains have really ramped up recently,” he said.

The last time job growth was this strong was in 2006.

Still Oregon’s labor under-utilization measure remains stubbornly high.

The state has about 150,000 part-time workers who’d like to be full-time. That’s down from the highs seen during the recession, but not much.

Unemployment Rate Press Release

This story originally appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting.