One in four Oregonians is underemployed

From the Bend Bulletin:

In California and a handful of other states, one out of every five people who would like to be working full time is not now doing so.
It is a startling sign of the pain that the Great Recession is inflicting, and it is largely missed by the official, oft-repeated statistics on unemployment. The national unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 percent, the highest level in more than a quarter-century. Yet it still excludes all those who have given up looking for a job and those part-time workers who want to be working full time.
Include them — as the Labor Department does when calculating its broadest measure of the job market — and the rate reached 23.5 percent in Oregon this spring, according to a New York Times analysis of state-by-state data. It was 21.5 percent in both Michigan and Rhode Island and 20.3 percent in California. In Arizona, Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio, the rate was just under 20 percent this spring and may have since surpassed it.
Almost nobody believes that unemployment has finished rising, either. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said he expected it to “tick up for several months.”

KOIN and Teufel Nursery file bankruptcy

From the Portland Business Journal:

The owner of Portland’s channel 6 KOIN TV station will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware this week, under a financial restructuring plan with debt holders.
Los Angeles-based New Vision Television, which also owns KBNZ in Bend, will eliminate $400 million in debt and guaranteed obligations and obtain $30 million in new financing under the agreement with first- and second-lien debt holders, the company announced. In exchange, debt holders will receive equity in the company and seats on its board of directors.

This station gets bought and sold every year. I feel sorry for the few employees who work there.

In other bankruptcy news Teufel Nursery filed bankruptcy last month. There isn't a story on it yet but a Google search confirms the rumors. I was really surprised by this because they sold a 100 acre nursery to Polygon Homes at the peak of the bubble.

Oregon unemployment rate unchanged at 12.2%

From the Oregon Employment Department:

Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 12.2 percent in June, the same as the revised May figure of 12.2 percent.
Despite remaining unchanged between May and June, Oregon’s unemployment rate
was up substantially from June 2008 when the rate was 5.9 percent.
The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent in June, from 9.4
percent in May.
In June, Oregon’s seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment declined by 7,200 jobs, following a drop of 1,600 (as revised) in May. This marked the 11th consecutive month of decline for this measure of employment.

Recession impacts Oregon's cattle industry

From the Oregonian:

"It's never been easy to make a living," says Ken Holliday, who runs a 10,000-acre ranch near John Day. "But now, you kind of wonder why you even do it."

In Oregon's vast cattle country, where life yields to nature's whims and business bucks with the market's whiplash, the global downturn is bearing down. At the start of a food chain that ends on your plate, Oregon ranchers are trying to hang on through a sudden swing that could mean a losing year for an industry that roped $664 million in gross sales last year.

In 2008, ranchers paid record high prices for corn, hay and feed -- an investment now all but lost as beef competes against falling prices for poultry and pork. People worldwide are buying less meat. Restaurants are ordering fewer steaks. And the hides that make shoes, car seats and furniture aren't worth much in a recession that has curbed consumer lust for material things...

Over a lifetime, a typical cow may eat thousands of pounds of corn, hay and feed before it ends up at the slaughterhouse. And last year, the cost of those ingredients went sky-high.

Feed shot up 22 percent, fertilizer and chemicals went up 26 percent and fuel rose 14 percent, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Corn, the primary diet of cattle in the last months of their lives, has tripled in price over recent years.

The high input costs are a big reason economists predict a money-losing year for the industry nationwide, with losses of up to $130 a head, which ripples throughout the chain, according to CattleFax, a market research firm. With 26 million head of cattle in the U.S., the losses multiply fast.

Even in a normal year, consumers might have hesitated to pay for beef at last year's production prices. But with the recession, world demand for beef has dropped, tamping a decade of growth fueled by rising incomes from here to India...

"This downturn is more severe and occurred quicker," Penick says. "The cycles have been much more extreme, the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. All of our industries in agriculture will have to adjust to the new economic realities that we face."

The article is fairly long but a good read.

Southern Oregon home values off 43%

Here is an update from beautiful Southern Oregon. The median sales price in July 2007 (market peak) was $325,000...

...last month it was $185,000. A drop of $140,000 or 43%

Yahoo!: Portland real estate has further to fall

From Yahoo!:

Home buyers looking for a bottom in the real estate market may have been encouraged by housing data released earlier this week. Sales of existing homes rose 2.4% in May, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Don’t get too excited – it’s still too early to say the housing market bottomed out, analysts and economists say. Distressed properties still account for about a third of all sales, and 29% of sales were to first-time home buyers, who are currently benefiting from an $8,000 tax credit.
The sales trends are telling. “You’re not really seeing a lot of move-up buying,” says Richard F. Moody, chief economist and director of research at Forward Capital, LLC. “There are so many vacant homes and so many foreclosures that [there’s] not the normal trade-up pattern that you would have traditionally seen,” Moody says.
“In light of the housing market boom and bust, consumers should feel very comfortable financially” before deciding to buy, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. “They should not try to overstretch their budget to get their dream home.”

Here are the five markets that have further to fall:
1. Detroit
2. New York City
3. Phoenix
4. Portland
5. Minneapolis

Calculated Risk has talked extensively about the lack of move-up buying and Agent503 notes that half the inventory in Portland is vacant and two thirds of all sales in Portland are vacant homes. Obviously those sales are not going to create move-up buyers.

Gresham Mayor averts foreclosure

From the Portland Tribune:

The wave of foreclosures hitting Oregon and the nation isn’t leaving anyone untouched – even Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis is facing the prospect of foreclosure on his home.

In March, Bemis was issued a notice of default for a loan of $666,474 for his four-bedroom home at 4695 S.E. Deer Creek Place in the Persimmon Country Club area.

Bemis told The Outlook on Wednesday that he has found a buyer for the 4,853-square-foot home and will avert foreclosure.

The mayor said that the sale of the home was required as one of the terms of his divorce agreement. Bemis, who bought the house new in January of 2007 for $834,250, placed the home on the market about a year and a half ago and lowered the price four times in the effort to find a buyer. Its latest listing price is $655,000.

“Given the deep recession and the housing bust,” Bemis said in a written statement, “we knew that it would be extremely difficult to find an interested buyer.

“Because I was not residing in the house, the financial burden of making payments for both the Persimmon house and my personal residence was unmanageable, and I became one of millions of Americans to face pre-foreclosure,” Bemis said.

A 21% price drop to move the home.