Portland Area’s Economy Looked Far Better in 2021 Than You Might Think, New Data Shows
As Portlanders wrung their hands about the condition of city streets, something odd happened last year: The metro-area economy boomed.
The combined Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro area saw job growth of 6.2% during 2021. That’s the 10th-fastest recovery among the 50 largest U.S. metro regions, state economist Christian Kaylor tweeted last week, citing new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Portland came in just shy of Dallas-Fort Worth’s 6.5% job growth. It beat out Miami, where the mayor is working overtime to woo crypto bros and investment bankers, at 6%. Las Vegas topped the list at 13.7%, followed by Orlando and San Diego, both at 9.1%. Those cities are all tourism centers, Kaylor noted.
Job openings told a similarly rosy story, at least for workers. In Multnomah and Washington counties, employers were looking to fill 28,000 jobs at any given time last year, an all-time high, according to the Oregon Employment…