June 2021 Regional Economic Indicators

Good afternoon.  Below is the University of Oregon Regional Economic Indexes for June 2021. The release date is August 31, 2021. We thank KeyBank for their generous support of this project.

Full report here with charts!

Oregon Regional Economic Indicators

Oregon’s major mero regions continued to rebound in June from the 2020 pandemic recession. Highlights of the report include:

The moving averages, which track the underlying trend, are all above zero (zero represents the average pace of growth for each area). Underlying trends are like those seen in recent months.

• While initial unemployment claims are still high relative to historic norms and create a drag on the measures, unemployment rates have fallen low enough to make positive contributions.
• Overall, employment components made moderate to high contributions to the measures as strong labor demand drives job growth. Anecdotally, many firms report difficulty attracting enough job applicants.
• Air passenger traffic continues to strongly support the measures; the sector strongly rebounded this year as business and pleasure travel returned.
• The housing data tells a familiar story with strong demand illustrated by the large contributions made by residential sales but neutral to moderate contributions from new housing units permitted. The imbalance between supply and demand is pushing housing costs higher. Home pricing appreciate is supported by income gains and historically low mortgage rates. In contrast to the housing bubble of the mid-2000’s, high prices are not driven by deteriorating underwriting conditions associated with exotic mortgage products and are thus less likely to suffer a sharp reversal.

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Tim Duy – 541.346.4660 (w)