July 2021 Regional Economic Indicators

Good afternoon.  Below is the University of Oregon Regional Economic Indexes for June 2021. The release date is October 1, 2021. We thank KeyBank for their generous support of this project.

Full report here with charts!

Oregon Regional Economic Indicators

Growth eased a notch in many of Oregon’s major metro regions in July but the overall growth trajectory remains solid. Highlights include:

• The moving averages, which track the underlying trend, are all at or above zero (zero represents the average pace of growth for each area).
• Home construction activity as measured by residential building permits mostly continued to hover near neutral levels despite generally strong demand as measured by residential units sold; this dynamic generally puts upward pressure on housing prices.
• The improved economy has helped drive down unemployment rates to levels that now contribute positively to the measures. Likewise, in another sign of improving economic conditions, initial unemployment claims have fallen enough that they now make nearly neutral contributions.
• Municipal waste collections continue to make positive contributions; increasing economic activity generally creates additional waste flow. Employment components generally made neutral to positive contributions with a handful of exceptions such as substantial negative contributions from the education and health service sector in the Eugene areas and the trade, transportation, and utilities sector in Salem. These most likely reflect the impacts of typical variability of the data.
• Lodging review slipped in the Eugene and Bend regions and created negative contributions but the general uphill trend remains in place. Still, the Delta variant may put some additional downward pressure on lodging in August and September. 

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