Employment in forestry/forest products:

"Like any job, accessibility to work in the forestry and forest products industries partly depends on you."

Your work history, prior experience, ability to tolerate certain work conditions will help attract employers to you.  In other words, a person with skills that relate directly to a particular industry job will have an easier time locating work compared to one whose skills do not directly relate to the same job.  Take heart, though: our field (forestry, forest products) is very diverse, and there is a job to meet the interest and match the skill levels of virtually everyone!

I mention that our field is diverse so we can segue to helping you track down employment in one of many sectors.  These are only ideas, general enough to be applied to any location in the US, although I will use Oregon to provide some specifics.  Remember that once you have chosen a specific location in which to find employment, more opportunities will arise— many jobs are location-specific. Here are some places to look:

Logging 

Most logging jobs are available through private industry.  Indeed, most public agencies contract out their harvest contracts to private businesses.  You may be able to find jobs and link to other resources via the Associated Oregon Loggers (AOL) website: http://www.oregonloggers.org/.

If not with AOL, then perhaps with Oregon Professional Loggers: http://www.theyankeegroup.com/oregon_professional_ loggers.htm

Mill Work

Many of the mills in the larger towns where I have worked found employees through job-placement services.  By providing a single application to a job-placement service, many jobs will be accessible to you.  One works for a few months through the job-placement service, after which you may be given the opportunity to be hired permanently through the mill.

Federal Forests

Please visit http://www.fs.fed.us/people/employ/.  This website will allow you to search, using keywords like "employment" and "jobs" for work in Region 6 (federal lands in Oregon and Washington).  Also see the BLM information below.

State Forests

Besides federal lands, there are state, county, and city lands.  A city may hire folks to work in city parks and special recreation areas; there are similar land designations at the county level.  Many states also have forests and parks, but regardless of the state agency with which you work, applying for the job is the same. You can look for jobs in Oregon through: http://www.oregonjobs.org/.  Oregon Department of Forestry, for example, hires people through this standardized state employment channel.

National Park Service (NPS)

	In Oregon we have Crater Lake National Park; in Washington there is Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks, to name a couple. To look for NPS, look here: http://www.nps.gov/personnel/.
	Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Both BLM and the Forest Service hire through federal channels, which you can glimpse here: http://www.blm.gov/careers/.

For those of you looking for a job, best wishes!

Related Links:

The Forestry Job Search Page

The Forestry Job Search Page is a collection of links to sites that offer forestry and forest products employment opportunities from all over the world.