Oregon adds 2500 private jobs – drops 1500 government


Patrick Emerson PhD ,

OSU Economist
Oregon Economics Blog

It is slow but it is steady – Oregon’s climb out of the deep pit that was the Great Recession continues albeit at a snail’s pace.  While job growth was only 1,000 in the black (on a seasonally adjusted basis), the private sector actually added 2,500 while government shed 1,500 jobs.  So we are still talking pretty healthy private sector job growth though clearly not as robust as we would like to see.

Years ago when I was predicting the fall out of the recession, I mentioned that there was no clearly identifiable driver of growth for the future.  This seems even clearer in retrospect: what we are seeing is the unraveling of the economic troubles wrapped up in housing and banking, but no great new productivity enhancing technology like the IT revolution (or innovations in credit markets…heh, heh).

So, while this is good news rather than bad, it is not great.  And in saying this I am consciously repeating a refrain made many, many times in the recent past.  But sometimes slow and steady is a good thing and this is one of those times.


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