If you spend much time in Portland, you’ll hear lots of people claim the recent woes are ‘just like this everywhere’ and because of national policy. While nationwide macro policies do make a difference such as tariffs that are causing broad price increases, many other metrics do not.

Moody’s analysis indicates that Oregon is one of 22 states already in, or at high risk, of recession, while around 16 other states are actually experiencing expanding economies.

Recent data from Oregon’s labor market shows a recent very high spike of unemployment and under-employment.

Oregon’s unemployment rate has steadily climbed for 2 years – now up to 5.0%. The U-6 rate (under-employment rate which consists of full-time employees that have had to take part-time jobs or recently given up looking for work) is at 9.3% – the highest level since Covid.