U.S. Chamber of Commerce It may be sunny in Los Angeles, but dark clouds hang over union members at the final day of the AFL-CIO convention. Union leaders are so unhappy with Obamacare, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that the convention is expected to vote on a resolution calling […]

October 1 a Big Day for Small Business By Jan Meekombs Oregon Chapter – NFIB Leaving aside all the justifiable gripes small-business owners have over the confusion, delays, retreats, and exceptions made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) since its passage in 2010, it’s the law of […]

Barran Liebman Oregon Law Firm Employers Must “Think Outside the Box” When Hiring in Seattle: New “Ban the Box” Ordinance Restricts Use of Criminal Background Checks 10 states and more than 50 municipalities and counties have some form of “ban the box” legislation, regulations, or ordinances on their books. Earlier […]

California Lutheran University My favorite economics chart shows income divided by population (this is income per person) on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis.  The time line runs from prehistoric times to the modern era (from, say 1000 BC to 2000).  The line in the chart is […]

Oregon U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) issued the following statement regarding the 2009 admission by intelligence officials that they did not fully understand the entirety of the bulk phone records collection program. Wyden and Udall are both members of the Senate Intelligence […]

The NW coffee entrepreneur, Howard Schultz, talks about Starbuck’s new policy on asking customers to refrain from bringing guns into their stores which has created a firestorm.

Excerpt from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: One way to measure the cost of lost output is in terms of how much worse off society is relative to a baseline trend that might have existed absent the crisis. Such an exercise is crucial to grasping the magnitude of what occurred […]

Barran Liebman Oregon Law Firm Following in the footsteps of Portland and Seattle among other places, advocates in Tacoma, Washington are moving forward with plans to implement a paid sick leave ordinance. The organization Healthy Tacoma is spearheading the effort and claims to have the support of at least four […]

Patrick Emerson PhD , OSU Economist Oregon Economics Blog Oregon Adds 4,500 Jobs but Unemployment Rate Climbs to 8.1% Oregon’s jobs picture keeps playing the same old song.  Decent jobs growth, but not great.  Unemployment stuck at an unacceptably high rate, though not as bad as the worst days of […]

University of Oregon Regional Economic Indexes By Tim Duy Oregon Economic Forum University of  Oregon Economic indicators show that Oregon continues to hold its momentum of recent months. Highlights of the report include: • The Oregon Measure of Economic Activity rose to 0.20 in July from an upwardly revised -0.05 […]