By Bill Conerly, Conerly Consulting, Businomics I have updated my economic forecast, and it looks a little better than it did a few months ago. I have upgraded the first three quarters of 2011. The later quarters have about the same growth rates as before–they were already fairly good growth […]

Public Employee Pension Transparency Act gains support by Blair Latoff By U.S. Chamber, The U.S. Chamber expressed its support for the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act introduced by Representatives Devin Nunes (R-CA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Lamar Smith (R-TX). The Act would require that state and local […]

NLRB Facebook Settlement Creates More Questions Than It Answers By Victor Kisch Stoel Rives — World of Employment, Oregon Law Firm On Monday, February 7, the NLRB issued a news release about a settlement in a case in which an employee criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page. In that […]

By Bill Conerly, Conerly Consulting, Businomics The National Football League is happy that Super Bowl viewership set an all-time record with 111 million U.S. viewers. Even more people watched a portion of the game. That sounds good, and from the narrow perspective of the United States of America, it is […]

Reasons behind Oregon’s personal income rating compared to national average By Oregon Department of Employment Oregon’s per capita personal income, the annual sum of all resident income in the state divided by the number of residents, was $36,125 in 2009. That’s 8.8 percent less than the national figure of $39,626. […]

New Estate Tax and Gift Tax changes for 2011 By Lori Bauman, Ater Wynne, Oregon Law Firm, Before EGTRRA of 2001 was scheduled to sunset, Congress acted and President Obama signed into law the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (“TRA”). TRA extended some of […]

Trends in Oregon population growth by Brooke Jackson-Winegardner Oregon Employment Department In 2010, Oregon’s population was approximately 3,844,000. It increased by 20,700, or 0.5 percent, from 2009. Since 2000, Oregon’s population has grown by 423,000 (12%). The number of Oregonians living in incorporated cities and towns has increased each year […]

Microsoft phone scam hits Northwest By Oregon Better Business Bureau Better Business Bureau warns that consumers in multiple countries have received phishing phone calls impersonating Microsoft. BBB serving Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington confirms the scam has hit the region. How does the scam work? The caller impersonates a Microsoft […]

By Tim Duy, Oregon Economic Forum sponsor, KeyBank. The University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators™ rose 2.7 percent in December to 90.5 (1997=100). All indicators improved compared to the previous month. Compared to 6 months ago, the UO index is up 3.5 percent, a sharp improvement from the 2.3 […]

AOI Wraps up Big Package of Air Rules – Sends to DEQ John Ledger Associated Oregon Industries Representing Oregon’s manufacturers, an AOI workgroup has submitted its second and last set of detailed comments to the DEQ on its opposed greenhouse gas and fine particulate permitting rules. The details of the […]