Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

This post has two charts with a lot of information on them. Think of them as references when it comes to employment, and poverty at the local level and how it compares across the state. The geographic areas used here are what the Census calls Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). These are generally geographic areas with a population of about 100,000 and is the smallest geography for which Census will release the microdata. What this means is that in urban areas, there are a number of PUMAs, while in rural areas, a PUMA is typically a group of counties. You can find the official Census names here, and corresponding individual maps (large PDF files) here.

Following every decennial Census, the PUMAs do change based on population growth and shifts. Many of Oregon’s PUMAs today are the similar to last decade, but there are some key differences. For instance, Clackamas County now has 4 PUMAs vs 3 before. Yamhill is now its own PUMA, which means Polk is now combined with Lincoln as a PUMA (last decade Polk/Yamhill were combined, while Lincoln used to be combined with the North Coast). Benton and Linn used to be combined, but are now split into Benton + South Linn, and then the rest of Linn (Albany, Lebanon, Sweet Home etc) is a separate one. Additionally, Central Oregon now has a Bend PUMA and a Rest of Deschutes + Crook + Jefferson PUMA. This has a knock-on effect of adjusting the PUMA boundaries for the Gorge and Northeastern Oregon.

Now, with all of that said, this first chart looks at the share of prime-working age Oregonians with a job in 2022. At a statewide level, 80.3% of Oregonians between the ages of 25 and 54 years old had a job last year, a few ticks above the U.S. figure of 79.7%. However, these employment rates do vary across the state. Here you do see many of the Portland area PUMAs near the top, with high employment rates, along with the new Bend PUMA, while many of the more rural PUMAs are near the bottom. The urban-rural differences are still apparent, even if they did not widen this cycle.

Note that I have taken a few liberties with the names to provide a short description or summary.

This second chart shows poverty for the total population, and among children by PUMAs across the state. Both Corvallis and Eugene are near the top, a well-known quirk in the data with college towns having high poverty rates because there are a lot of students, not making much money (even if their costs are being paid for by their parents or loans). But you also see East Portland which has the second highest poverty rate overall, and highest child poverty rate in the state. The East Portland PUMA isn’t exactly all of the city east of 82nd and north of Powell, but it’s close to that (see map here). We also see higher poverty rates in many of the more rural areas of the state, and elsewhere in the Willamette Valley. While on the lower end, we find many of the suburban Portland PUMAs.

Those charts have a ton of information in them, and I’m working on turning them into maps for presentation purposes. But one big thing that stands out to me as I continue to comb through the new ACS data is the following.

One of the key economic aspects of this cycle, and the recovery the pandemic is not only has it been strong, and fast, but it has also been inclusive. Many of the longstanding disparities when it comes to employment and income by race and ethnicity, sex, educational attainment, even broad geographic location (urban-rural) did not widen, and are actually a bit smaller today than they were prior to the pandemic. That was generally not the pattern experienced in recent cycles where those disparities initially widened, and then only started to improve later on in the cycle. So that is good news.

However, even as that paragraph is true, once we start digging into the data, we can clearly see that many of those disparities remain. They may not be larger, they may in fact be a bit better, but from a lived experience, in particular from a neighborhood and regional level, the economic differences, and economic segregation in our communities remains large. And of course, we care about this from a societal perspective for a host of reasons, but we also know that economic mobility is greatest in places with less segregation, and more integration.