I graduated less than a year ago, so my experience may be recent enough to help you. This is anecdotal of course but may give you some ideas of the overall job market and then a little bit that's OR specific. The short answer is that things look really good in our field, but it also depends on what you're looking for in a job and how flexible you are. This is my own job search:
I was graduating in May. Though it seemed a little early to be looking, I decided to put out some job hunting feelers in February. I'd decided to make finding a job with student loan repayment benefits a top priority (not the 10-year government repayment program, private repayment your employer gives you). That being the case, my job hunt was open to WA, OR, ID, MT, WY, and CO mostly, but other places too if there was a really good prospect.
I didn't apply to many jobs in OR because I didn't find many that offered what I wanted. However, within three weeks of starting my job search in February, I had three job offers that included student loan repayment, despite telling these employers I wouldn't graduate until May and wouldn't be licensed until after that. HOWEVER, these job offers were in WY, MT, and then MN. What these all had in common were rural states/towns that few graduates want to go live in. It's hard to fill vacancies in these places, so they have no problem taking new grads. They also offer some pretty sweet deals to try to attract applicants.
About OR: As I recall, there were plenty of job openings in OR. You should be able to find work there just fine. However, my advice is to make sure to evaluate job openings based on the "whole package," not just the pay. One of the job offers I got paid quite well, but then their health insurance for myself + dependents was over $1,100 a month out of my paychecks. They didn't pay anything toward insurance for their employees. Another company that offered me a job paid slightly less per hour but only cost $250 a month for better medical insurance, because the company paid for most of it. Make sure to look at their productivity expectations too. The perks and benefits packages (stuff like relocation bonuses, sign-on bonuses, and student loan repayment) were why I didn't see many appealing openings (for me) in OR, though there were plenty of jobs there. OR is a beautiful, desirable area to live. They don't have to try very hard to attract PTs, so you'll only find those extras in the really remote OR areas.
Personal ending/a bit more advice: If you can (I know there are circumstances that prevent it sometimes), try to be flexible. Opening up your job search to several states gives you some amazing opportunities and enables you to be more "picky." I wanted to live in the Northwest US, but I ended up in a tiny town of 2,000 people in Minnesota. Why? It's probably not a good idea to give the specific amount they offered me on the internet (I apologize if I may have posted it somewhere in the past without thinking), but the company I work for offered a student loan benefit that meant most of my loans went POOF! They offered me that on top of a salary that's well above the median starting pay for PTs, so we packed up our stuff, bought a snow shovel and a sled, and went on our way whistling. Don't count out those small towns and fly-over states!
Hopefully that didn't sound too much like bragging/patting myself on the back. Good luck on your job search!
