Good morning. This is the University of Oregon Regional Economic Indexes for January 2018. The release date is today, April 2, 2018. We thank KeyBank for their generous support of this project.
Oregon Regional Economic Indicators:
Regional economies continued to show strength as 2018 began. Highlights of this month’s report include:
- For all regions covered by this report, both raw and moving average measures (which smooth monthly volatility) remained above zero in January, indicating an above trend pace of activity. Housing activity was generally stronger.
- New home permits contributed positively in most areas, and the negative contributions experienced in Eugene-Springfield and Salem were fairly modest.
- That said, home sales in both those areas made particularly large contributions; with new construction not coming on the market fast enough to meet housing demand, prices will likely continue to rise.
- Very low unemployment rates supported measures for all regions, and low initial unemployment claims indicates that job growth will likely continue across Oregon’s metro regions (although the pace of job growth is slowing now that the economy has moved into a more mature stage of the business cycle).
- Labor force growth was particularly supportive of the Eugene-Springfield and Rogue Valley measures..
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