What's New on QualityInfo

Micro-breweries, employment projections, air conditioning, craft breweries, home building, increasing average hourly earnings, brewpubs, and several other topics besides beer are on tap this month. Read all of our new ales, I mean articles, and impress your friends and family with your knowledge of Oregon’s labor market situation while enjoying your favorite IPA, porter, or lager when watching the rest of MARCH MADNESS (which obvs spills over into April).

Our lead article is about Oregon’s brewing industry. Does it seem a new brewery, brand or type of beer appears every week? You are not far off. Damon Runberg gives us the suds on one of the fastest growing parts of Oregon’s economy in his article, State of Beer: Revisiting Oregon’s Brewing Industry.

Every two years we release our employment projections for the next ten years. We just released our 2012-2022 projections. You can read a short synopsis of our projections or take a look at all of the projections to find out what we think Oregon’s employment economy will look like down the road. We will be incorporating the new projections in our tools in the next several weeks.

It may yet rain quite a bit in April (gotta bring those May flowers), but it could be time to tune up that air conditioning for the spring and summer, or replace the furnace which rumbled all winter. Either way, you want someone who knows what they are doing on the job. HVACR Technicians Make it Hot by Brooke Jackson gives us an insight into the skills needed to be part of this fast growing occupation.

Construction seems to be one of the bellwethers for Oregon’s economy. Dallas Fridley takes a look at building permit numbers, housing starts, prices and mortgage rates in his article, Home Building in Oregon, First In, Last Out of Recession.

When we think of the Portland metro area, we generally think of a three-county region, yet not all three counties are recovering at the same pace. A Story of Uneven Recoveries: Clackamas County Trailing Neighboring Multnomah and Washington Counties, by Amy Vander Vliet explains why.

One of the gauges we use when measuring Oregon’s economy is whether wages are going up or down. David Cooke tells us what the gauge reads in his short article, Are Oregon Workers Getting a Raise?

Are there more small firms in retail trade than in construction? What percentage of firms in the manufacturing sector have 100 employees or more? How many firms in Oregon have four or less employees, and what percent of employers and employment does this represent? Phoebe Colman has the answer to these and more questions in her article, Portrait of Oregon Businesses by Size of Firm.

Another measure of Oregon’s economic health is the amount of churn in the labor market. Are workers changing jobs? Are they working more jobs? What might this data indicate? Will Burchard explains this measure and where it currently points in his article, Second Quarter 2013: Oregon Workers Respond to More Job Opportunities.

We'll share cliffnotes versions of some of these fabulous articles here on the blog during the month. Check back soon!