Oregon Employment Trend Takes a Breather After Five Strong Months By Oregon Employment Department Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 10.0 percent in March, essentially unchanged from 10.2 percent in February. March marked Oregon’s lowest unemployment rate in 26 months. Oregon’s rate has not been lower since January 2009, when […]

Oregon Forecast Highlights 2011 Q2 Dan Hamilton, CLU Center for Economic Research & Forecasting Oregon’s recent economic performance has exceeded my expectations. Much of the 2011 first quarter data is not final, but it appears that we have enough to understand that it was strong. It was atypically strong for […]

State Treasurer:Senate Bill 19 that could save Oregon taxpayers tens of millions — SB 19 allows the state to save debt costs by switching to lower-cost bonds SALEM – Gov. John Kitzhaber today signed into law an Oregon Treasury-sponsored bill that could foster cost savings worth tens of millions, which […]

Revisions to Health Care Reform Law: Oregon Readies Passage of Oregon Health Care Reform By Barran Liebman Oregon law firm This year, along with April showers, the beginning of spring has brought some noteworthy developments in the ongoing saga of Health Care Reform. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Challenges to […]

AOI Employment Law Watch List By J.L. Wilson Associated Oregon Industries Oregon’s largest business advocate The deadline for legislation to move out of its original committee is this week. All legislation that is not passed out of its original committee this week is considered dead. For groups like AOI, it’s […]

An Advertising Perspective on the Kerry-McCain and Stearns-Matheson Privacy Bills Davis Wright Tremaine LLP Oregon law firm Last week, Sens. John Kerry and John McCain and Reps. Cliff Stearns and Jim Matheson offered new privacy bills. The Kerry-McCain Senate bill and the Stearns-Matheson House bill each seeks to apply a […]

By U.S. Chamber of Commerce Savannah-area Girl Scouts got a tough lesson in business regulation and competition when they were banned from selling cookies in front of the childhood home of their founder, Juliette Gordon Low. After decades of selling in front of the house, Savannah’s zoning administrator received a […]

CNN has this story and the numbers behind Apple’s tremendous boost.

By Patrick Emerson Oregon Economics Blog Yesterday Standard and Poor’s, a credit rating agency, lowered its outlook on the prospect of the US political system making serious progress on dealing with the mounting debt. There was no change in the actual rating they give to US treasuries and bonds which […]

Wells Fargo cuts 1,900 mortgage jobs, Bank of America cuts 1,500 By Oregon Small Business Association West coast bank Wells Fargo cut 1,900 employees from the mortgage unit nationwide last month. The layoffs were announced on March 23 and gave the employees 60 days’ notice. The San Francisco company gave […]