One of the big things people consider when relocating to a new area is of course, can they find a job.  In Salem, Oregon state jobs dominate the employment landscape because it is the state capital.   There are approximately 16,000 state jobs located in the city of Salem. You do need to know that there is a lot of competition for state jobs, and I have seen many people apply and apply and not get hired. People are moving and relocating here so competition is fierce.

Health Industries:
In the health industries we have Salem Hospital and Silverton Hospital. Salem Hospital just underwent a large expansion.  We also have numerous health care jobs as well such as HMO Oregon, Salem Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente.

Industrial/Manufacturing/Factory:
For industrial/manufacturing work we have Norpac plants located in Stayton, Brooks, and Salem. They provide approximately 2,000 jobs to the area. Rainsweet is also located in Salem with around 600 jobs.  Sanyo is building a solar panel plant and those jobs will be hiring at some future date.

Valmont/Microflect has facilities here as well that gives Salem about 300 jobs.

Service Sector:
Salem is home to one of the T-mobile customer service centers as well as Wachovia’s customer service center. They provide approximately 1700 jobs to the area.

Home Depot will be building their distribution center in Salem and so jobs will be created with that business here.

In Polk county is the Spirit Mountain Casino. In Grande Rhone, people often choose to live in Dallas, OR and commute out to the Casino.

Higher Education:
With regard to higher education, Salem has two private universities in Willamette University and Corban College. Close by in Monmouth is Western Oregon University (WOU, pronounced woo). We also have Chemeketa Community College in Salem.

The prison system offers a lot of work for local residents with the penitentiaries located on State Street and one on Aumsville Hwy, looking for work in the justice system is available here. We also have the Maclaren School, located in the Woodburn area, which is the juvenile prison.

Roth’s, Wal-mart, and Fred Meyer are also large employer’s in our area. If you are looking to move to Salem, Oregon we do have a variety of types of employment in the area.