Oregon mills have announced nearly 500 layoffs over the past year, cutting jobs in response to poor log supply, weak demand and difficulty finding qualified workers.

The job cuts have hammered cities from Banks to John Day. Oregon’s mills are concentrated in its small towns and rural counties, places where even a relatively modest layoff can have a mammoth impact on the local economy.

“It’s still a huge, important economic pillar for a lot of our communities even if at a statewide level it’s relatively small,” interim state economist Josh Lehner told Oregon lawmakers in Salem in August.

The state’s logging and mill jobs pay an average wage of a little more than $65,000 annually, according to the Oregon Employment Department. In the counties with the densest concentration of timber jobs, the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis said timber wages are 17% higher than the average across all industries.

The recent string of layoffs began last fall when Hampton Lumber laid off 58 at a sawmill in Banks. More cuts followed in Springfield, Philomath, Riddle, Toledo, John Day and at the Willamette Falls paper mill in West Linn.

Most of the layoffs came at independent firms with limited access to logs or other raw materials. They’re also facing a difficult market, with high interest rates dampening construction activity.

The state’s quarterly economic forecast, issued last week, digs into the timber industry’s impact across Oregon.

Lane County has the most timber jobs, a little more than 4,300. The county’s timber wages are 26% higher than the county’s average wage. The timber industry employs 3,500 in Douglas County, accounting for more than 1 in 10 private sector jobs there.

A handful of wood products companies are expanding, aiming to ride out the weak market and position themselves for a revival.

Roseburg Forest Products announced last year it would spend $700 million to build a fiberboard panel factory and wood trim plant in Douglas County and upgrade existing plants. And economic boosters have put great hope in mass timber, using a novel technology that uses wood to replace steel and concrete in construction.

Still, Oregon has lost 40% of its forestry jobs since 2001, according to state figures, and a third of its mill jobs. Tourism has helped backfill some of that decline in rural communities, but Lehner said those travel industry jobs don’t fully compensate for what’s lost when the timber jobs go away.

“It’s an important (economic) driver,” Lehner said, “and it still pays higher wages compared to the other local opportunities.”