Amid Governor Brown’s keeping businesses under her thumb until January, the national front is booming with a Gross Domestic Product growth at an annualized rate of 33.1% in the third quarter of 2020. The GDP is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced that is used to indicate the purchasing power per capita. This jump in GDP is nearly double the previous record set 70 years ago.

How does Oregon stack up? Oregon Office of Economic Analysis reports Oregon’s housing inventory is down 40 percent compared to 20 percent nationally, which would normally indicate sales are strong. But in a pandemic, it’s an indication of non-willing sellers. This is not stopping the strong sales of resort homes in the Bend area above $750,000. It has the effect of skewing the economy because it does not mean all that much for the middle-income families. Instead, it has the effect of forcing up prices even on median homes. Statewide construction decreased a -4.6 percent in September making it a negative growth six months in a row. That rolls down to a -11.6 percent decline in the logging industry and a -9.0 percent in manufacturing.

Out of the twelve categories tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, none of them have had an increased rate from the prior month for six straight months, meaning Oregon has been on a down hill spiral for six months. The hardest hit is the leisure and hospitality industry with double digit decline every month with -25.0 decline in September. What this does to other industries and small businesses can’t be calculated.

Governor Brown just extended her Executive Order to continue this downward momentum. Even though the unemployment rate has gone down to 8.0 percent in September, it can’t be interpreted as an indication of economic gain as long as every category of measurement continues to show losses. It just prolongs a complete collapse. How many of Oregon’s small businesses can survive to January?


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2020-10-29 18:26:27

Last Update: 2020-10-31 08:29:12