June 2018 Oregon Regional Economic Indicators

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June 2018 Oregon Regional Economic Indicators:

June was another month of solid expansion for Oregon’s major metropolitan areas.

Link to full report (with charts) here.

Highlights of this month’s report include:

• For all regions covered by this report, both raw and moving average measures (which smooth monthly volatility) were solidly above zero, indicating an above-trend pace of activity (trend activity differs across regions).
• Housing permits made a just-above neutral contribution to all measures with the exception of the Rogue Valley where housing construction remains soft in comparison to past trends. The housing markets in the Portland area has cooled from a super-heated pace of last year but remains strong overall.
• Labor force numbers continue to follow recent patterns of weakness. This could be the result of an economy that has reached full employment in which the excess slack in labor markets evident in the years since the Great Recession have finally been reduced to a very low level. It may also reflect a slowing of in-migration of job seekers into the state.
• While overall it remains too early to identify a cause of the slowing (or even that a slowing has conclusively occurred as data might be revised higher), the issue remains watching as it could indicate the economy is entering a new phase of the business cycle where labor availability become a greater constraint on growth.

Media Contacts:
Tim Duy – 541.346.4660 (w)