It's possible that there was a state-wide hiring freeze on teachers. State revenues, like federal revenues, declined substantially during the economic downturn. And since education is usually a major part of state budgets, it becomes a primary target for spending cuts if the state government is trying to reduce the amount of debt they're accumulating. A lot of states have balanced budget requirements, but I don't know if Oregon is one. Even if Oregon doesn't have a balanced budget requirement, there will still be substantial political pressure for the state government to reduce spending.

I'm related to two teachers, and the answer is yes, if not worse.

In IT/CS we're used to extreme pigeon-holing of personnel (So, I'm the guy who was hired to install using LVM and ext2 but we'd never hire a guy who listed ext3 on his resume...) Its all about the pigeon-holing and resume keyword scanning.

In the teaching world, its simpler, more like "we want to hire a grade school teacher". Aside from some HR fluff, that's pretty much it for the hiring ad. If there are 200 districts in your state, all of whom hire "someone" every year because of quitting / retirement / firing / whatever, then you have to send out 200 resumes to each district, just like every other unemployed teacher and/or new grad. The majority of new grads end up as retail clerks or waitresses, of course, but some do get hired. Most get hired because someone knows them... but the eternal hope of being the only applicant somewhere springs eternal, and each application only costs a small amount of time and money, so its a lotto mentality.

Sadly, that is indeed normal for people looking for jobs as teachers in Oregon, and has been normal for at least the last several years. The only districts that are really hiring are the very rural ones, and even then it is usually just one or two positions.

That included applications to places like Toys-R-Us.