PORTLAND, Ore. – When a northeast Portland business owner put an ad on Craigslist for a job opening, he said he was unprepared for the flood of responses.

Applicants with doctorate degrees, high-profile job histories and executive experience were all included in the deluge of applicants.

The job? A kitchen position at Costello’s Travel Café.

Owner Chris Costello said he used to get 50 applications in a week for a typical job posting.

He said he had to pull the latest Craigslist ad after he received piles of applications in just two days.

The response is another sign of the weakening economy, which appears to be hitting Oregon workers especially hard.

Oregon ’s unemployment rate spiked nearly a full point in October, to 7.3 percent. It had been 6.4 percent just a month previous.

The Oregon unemployment rate is also well above the national average of 6.5 percent.

Costello said he plans to read through each applicant’s resume, spending about 4 minutes on each one.

It may take 16 hours to read them all at that rate.

Costello said that while he had the advantage of hiring the best applicant, he feels sorry for all the people he was not able to hire.

The same scenario is being repeated all over the state.

Officials at local retail institution Fred Meyer said they have been deluged with applications for their seasonal hiring, which they have had to scale back due to the economic crisis and expected reductions in consumer spending this year.