New Data for Oregon Hardest Hit Program: 2009 Employment, Unemployment, and Unemployment Rates by County/MSA.

In a very short period of time OHCS and the Oregon Housing Council will need to make decisions on how to program and allocate the largest housing grant in Oregon's history--the recently announced $88 million "Hardest Hit" grant (search keyword Hardest Hit for prior blog posts).

The primary stated reason that Oregon received the grant was because of concentrated unemployment. (see Treasury release HERE for official explanation). This likely means that OHCS will be looking closely at prioritizing areas of the state where the occurrence and rate of unemployment has been the highest, I.E.--the Hardest Hit.

Comprehensive 2009 Oregon Unemployment Data Posted in Excel
To stimulate thinking about the allocation decision that OHCS will be making, I have assembled a comprehensive Excel workbook HERE which includes, for each Oregon COUNTY and MSA, counts for each month in 2009, and a 2009 average of:

• # in Civilian Labor Force.
• # Employed.
• # Unemployed.
• Unemployment Rate, including seasonally adjusted unemployment rates.

All of my data comes from special reports I constructed using the Oregon Labor Market Information System (HERE).

A couple of initial observations:

1. In the unemployment rate worksheet, I have highlighted columns with an unweighted average unemployment rate of 12% or more--there are 16 counties. Many are rural counties. Metro exceptions include Columbia, Lane, Jackson, and Deschutes counties.
   
2. If you look at the unemployed worksheet you will see that the 5 Metro Portland counties had on average 44.6% of all unemployed workers in the state in 2009. This is a slightly lower % than the 48.5% of the total statewide labor force found in these counties. This suggest that these counties DO represent a big share of all unemployed in Oregon but may be somewhat less "hard hit" if unemployment rates are used for comparison. (Yep, I realize this is subject to interpretation and others may view this differently AND also that unemployment counts or rates will NOT be the sole factor in the allocation process).
   

I expect that OHCS funding allocations will strike some sort of balance between unemployment rates AND the share of all unemployed workers found in different locations around the state AND will include factors other than unemployment (defaults, foreclosures, etc).

Notes: If you uncover any errors in the workbook please let me know--it was a lot of data to crunch in less than 24 hours since Friday's Council meeting.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.