Portland's Economic Scorecard - 2010

 

When it comes to important economic indicators, how do you get through all the opinions to know with certainty just where Portland ranks? Taxes...cost of living...are businesses doing better or worse...moving in or moving out?

 

Overview

Portland’s Economic Scorecard 2010 provides a means for measuring the progress of Portland and the Portland Region at growing the local and regional economy. This effort emerged from the 2007 report, Looking Out for Portland and Beyond, which provided an in-depth assessment of Portland’s local and regional economic performance. That effort resulted in a call for annual benchmarking of progress to inform business and community leaders in strategy and policy development to support economic growth. The Scorecard presents twenty-nine indicators that measure local and regional economic growth. These indicators represent a mix of measures that are directly related to economic outcomes such as employment, income, and earnings, as well as indictors that are secondarily related to economic outcomes such as education attainment, affordability, and transportation.

What we found

• Portland is outperforming its peers on several key employment related indicators, including overall employment, private sector employment, and unemployment rate. It should be noted that the national economic recession has resulted in considerable drops in employment nationally, regionally and locally. Therefore for many of the indicators “outperforming” means
  “declining less than your peers.”
• Portland is outperforming its peers on education attainment of its population.
• Together these indicate a higher standard of living because Portland is also outperforming the peer regions in household income.
• However, Portland and the region are lagging the benchmarks on affordability and cost measures, including city and regional housing costs, regional rental affordability, city property
  tax levels, and overall regional cost index. To become more competitive and to continue growing the local and regional economy will require Portland and the region to bring these
  costs in line with peer and national averages.
• Portland’s performance within the innovation economy is mixed. It is outperforming its peers on venture capital and patents issued but underperforming on science and engineering occupations.

Dozens of indicators are measured and maintained by various entities -- from the Census Bureau to academic institutions. But the collective data for Portland has never been neatly assembled at our fingertips. Until now.  Find out more by reading Portland's Economic Scorecard - 2010

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