Why has Oregon recovered economically so much quicker than California? (Portland: real estate, foreclosure)

[FaceInTheCrowd]

Any ideas?
Unemployment in the U.S. - Google Public Data Explorer

[Silverfall]

Well if you are using the unemployment rate as the sole indication of improvement, then I'd suggest that more people were willing to move away from Oregon for work than from California leaving fewer on our unemployment rolls.

Originally Posted by Silverfall

Well if you are using the unemployment rate as the sole indication of improvement, then I'd suggest that more people were willing to move away from Oregon for work than from California leaving fewer on our unemployment rolls.

Eh, Oregon's population growth from 2008 to 2011 was about the same as California's (2.74% vs 2.97%).

CA got hit very, very hard by the whole foreclosure thing, and continues to suffer. 1/283 for Feb 2012 in CA, vs 1/956 for OR, and 1/637 nationally.

Basically, California had a severely overheated economy, fueled by grossly inflated housing prices and massive amounts of consumer debt. Thus, when the bubble finally burst, the effect was huge and it's going to take a very long time to recover.

Oregon got hit very hard too (obviously the market for wood and grass seed kind of dies when the housing market collapses), but our local economy wasn't nearly as driven by inflated housing prices.

[FaceInTheCrowd]

That's an interesting point. Or, maybe Oregon hands out unemployment more easily to people not really established there? I just googled 'unemployment rate' and was depressed by the amount of complexity and contradictory ways there are to determine such a seemingly simple thing.

Would you say that Oregon is not doing as well as California?
Say, in Job Creation? Or, some other indicator? Thanks.


OOPS, didn't see your post JasonF. Yes, good point there as well.
Just seems strange that, considering the differences in size, economy of the two states, their unemployment rates seems to soar together ...then Oregons quickly shuttered back down to 'normal' where California's has more smoothly looked like the typical 'bell curve'. Just curious as to any theories about how Oregon reversed course so quickly. I think Silverfall brought up a good point. Thanks everyone for answering.

[Smiled]

Manufacturing jobs picked up; fully 1/4 of Oregon jobs are in manufacturing - twice the number of California.
This is typical - we are one of the last in, trailing by 6 months; we also trail coming out. Construction jobs are unchanged... people moved.

You can get lots more info at the state website qualityinfo.org.

[pw72]

Oregon's economy is not as complex as California. Jobs will return to economies that were more stable to begin with. Washington State is in the same boat. I think we will see WA/OR bouncing back faster than CA. Especially, WA, with its inherent industries.

[Billy_J]

I don't know what percentage wood products jobs are in Oregon, but Japan had the earthquake and tsunami. A lot of wood construction there. That I am told picked things up in Oregon.

Then the economy has been improving nationwide, so more wood products sales. I see 8 to 10 railroad cars a day at one mill loaded with product whereas several years ago there would only be 2 a day.

And then perhaps "inertia". Think of Oregon as a small lightweight car. And think of California as a big long heavy train. Easy to get that little car back up to speed. Takes awhile to get that big heavy train moving again.

And so far as that goes, Oregon has many small towns. It is quite easy for the people of those small towns to meet with city officials, discuss the jobs problem, then do something right now to attract new jobs.

That is not so easy in a large city. Try to get a large city to change anything. But Portland is an exception to that. Citizens can easily start an initiative, get the required signatures, and get something changed. Also all forms of government in Oregon including the City of Portland have volunteer citizen committees. And many of the people on these being "regular" people. They listen to what these people have to say.

One of the things I love about Oregon! Quite different from anywhere else I have lived.

[Fiddlehead]

As JasonF says, the effect of the housing bubble was huge. If you look at the metro numbers, you can see that the two areas most influence by the bubble (which specialized in trolling for Californians expats with equity bucks) are still hammered.

Unemployment Rates for Metropolitan Areas

Medford is still at over 12% UE, Bend is at 13.5%.

Compare that to Portland at 8.6% and Corvallis at 6.1%. For some reason, the immigrants don't seem to know as much about Corvallis, as, say, Ashland or Bend, or perhaps Corvallis has a more diverse economy. I am sure many are in Portland too, but it has a much more diverse economy, and the bubble effect was relatively smaller.

What is interesting is that most of the most heavily impacted metros in California are in the central valley and deserts, whereas the coastal areas are doing better. The former areas had the most real estate speculation and the least diverse economies, I think.

Oregon County data here:

http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/AllRates?adjusted=n

For some reason, the immigrants don't seem to know as much about Corvallis, as, say, Ashland or Bend, or perhaps Corvallis has a more diverse economy.

Corvallis is somewhat different from other OR towns. The economy (and housing market) is completely dominated by the university, which has been fairly recession proof. If anything, the economy has become less diverse, with HP laying off huge numbers of employees and closing production lines over the last few years. Many of those former HP workers are now at OSU, while others have simply left since there's no other game in town, which has resulted in the town's permanent resident population actually shrinking, leading to school budget cuts as enrollment continues to tumble.

Sadly, the city council doesn't seem to think there's a problem with this, and in fact some members of the city council want to see more jobs slashed so that more people will get out of Corvallis.