I’ve been cleaning up some of my posts from the past 16 months since I’ve been blogging.  Over that time, I have written many posts about unemployment and obviously housing.  It amazed me to see how many posts I had written where I indicated Oregon’s economy was strong, growth was good and that our employment situation was far from being as bad as the rest of the U.S.  Things have changed dramatically and quickly.

I went on line to see exactly when the unemployment rate started trending up as well as the inventory of houses started increasing because I wanted to see the correlation between the two. 

From the chart, it looks as if the unemployment rate started increasing rapidly by Q3 2008 and was low during the peak housing market from 2004 right through that mid-2008 point.

On the other hand, the RMLS™ chart shows our housing inventory started to increase a year earlier in September 2007 when our housing crisis started.  Frankly, I was prepared to see the inventory levels increase around the same time as the unemployment numbers started increasing, but that wasn’t the case.  Our housing market started declining 12 months before the unemployment rate started skyrocketing.

Our unemployment numbers are horrendous and Portland’s August unemployment was at 11.6% while Oregon is at 12.2%. 

In Oregon, we are at the beginning stages of a new Governor’s race. I hope new leadership will focus on bringing jobs and new industry to Oregon. 

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