Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

Lots of good stuff coming in the next few weeks. Today and tomorrow I will have a fresh, more detailed, look at educational attainment in Oregon plus some additional information on government workers in Oregon. Next week I will have a multi-post series on unemployment in Oregon with a focus on the labor market faced by the short-term and long-term unemployed. Additional future items include the features we had in the latest forecast document including a continuation of our regional economic series, this time for Northeast Oregon and Southeast Oregon, in addition to state labor market comparisons and use of the safety net programs. In the pipeline is also more work on agriculture, exports and employment plus toward the end of the month the job polarization report. So please stay tuned for all these good things in the near future.

For now, I want to leave you with a very important graph to keep in the back of your mind when discussions turn toward income, poverty, taxes, policy, etc. This comes from the Census Bureau’s release yesterday of the 2012 Income, Poverty and Health Coverage report (specifically see the press kit, then slides). The state and metro level data is to be released tomorrow (Thursday) but the national media today is filled with lots of interesting takes on the matter. I won’t rehash the major trends here on the blog since they’re covered everywhere else, but I think this graph really tells a major story about how most Americans and American families live. The data presented are 2012 incomes for a family of four. (HT to Justin Wolfer’s twitter account)