By Rachel Dawson  Businesses across Oregon are laying off employees and shuttering their doors, triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak and Kate Brown’s executive order requiring social distancing and closing specified businesses. Unemployment claims jumped by around 3,200% in Oregon last week and unemployment could reach 20% in the coming months. […]

By National Federation of Independent Business, The NFIB Research Center released the following data today on the small business loan programs: The severity of economic disruptions in the small business sector is quickly increasing the immediate demand for financial assistance among small business owners. NFIB’s Small Business Economic Trends survey […]

By Josh Lehner Office of Economic Analysis The bad economic data is just now starting to roll in, helping to quantify some of the initial impacts of the coronavirus. Yesterday we got another round of initial claims for unemployment insurance from last week at both the U.S. and state level. […]

By NFIB, Comment from Anthony Smith, Oregon state director for NFIB, the nation’s leading small-business advocacy association, on today’s announced framework for reopening Oregon’s economy. “Small businesses welcome the start of a conversation surrounding the reopening of Oregon’s economy. In order to make informed decisions, small businesses need reliable information […]

By Andrew Schpak & Daniel Walker Barran Liebman Oregon Law Firm, Beginning in early March, strict social distancing measures forced numerous businesses to either curtail operations or temporarily close. Many employers chose to temporarily lay off employees with the expectation that employees would be brought back within a few weeks. […]

Oregon Attorney General, Attorney General Rosenblum joined 32 Attorneys General in a letter urging online giants Amazon, Facebook, Ebay, Walmart, and Craigslist to rigorously monitor price gouging practices by third-party online sellers. On March 16, 2020 at Rosenblum’s request, Governor Kate Brown declared an “abnormal disruption to the Oregon marketplace” […]

US Chamber Press Release, A new poll taken from March 25 – 28, 2020 and released from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and MetLife reveals that one in four small businesses (24%) say they are two months or less from closing permanently amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus […]

New Temporary Exemptions From Maximum Working Hour Requirements By Josh Goldberg & Amy Angel Barran Liebman Oregon Law Firm, The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (“BOLI”) has issued a new rule that permits certain manufacturers to claim a temporary emergency exemption from maximum working hour requirements. Recognizing the critical […]

By Josh Lehner Oregon Office of Economic Analysis While it is still too soon to know the full extent of the economic fallout, I thought it may be helpful to sketch out how our office is currently thinking about the outlook.  I was on OPB’s Think Out Loud and the […]

Record Initial Claims for Unemployment Benefits Continue in Oregon By Oregon Employment Department, During the week starting March 22, the Oregon Employment Department received 92,700 initial claims for Unemployment Insurance benefits. That represented a 21 percent increase from the previous record during the week starting March 15. By comparison, the […]