More Good News on the Portland Jobs Front

Tuesday, April 05, 2016

GoLocalPDX Business Team

Austin, Texas, Salt Lake City and Portland, OR are all cities with the highest Job Creation Index scores among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, “based on employee reports of hiring activity where they work, according to data from GALLUP.

Portland, like many of the other top-ranking metro areas are being boosted by growth in technology jobs. Cities like Portland and Salt Lake City “may be increasingly attractive destinations for tech workers, given salaries that are becoming more competitive for the industry, along with a much lower cost of living than in California,” said GALLUP.

“…Portland is also a prosperous economy offering new opportunities for technology and innovation. The city is fast becoming a next-generation technology hub. Our newest data center in a nearby suburb will be one of the most advanced and efficient data centers in the world,” wrote Oregon’s Grow Our Own on Friday.

The effect of a robust and growing tech sector is the ripple effect. As GoLocalPDX has been tracking during the past year, the effect of the growth maybe it “spills over into growth in housing and construction jobs to meet the basic needs of the growing workforce in those areas.” But, it may also mean in the case of Portland increases in housing availability and costs that push some residents out of the city.

The results are based on Gallup Daily tracking. Gallup asks working Americans to say whether their employer is hiring workers and expanding the size of its workforce, not changing the size of its workforce, or letting workers go and reducing the size of its workforce. Overall, throughout 2014, an average of 39% of U.S. workers said their employer was hiring workers, compared with 13% who said their employer was letting workers go, resulting in a nationwide Job Creation Index of +26. Reports of job creation are currently quite strong and have improved each year since 2009.

Gallup assigns respondents to metro areas using the definitions for Metropolitan Statistical Areas developed by the federal Office of Management and Budget. Each MSA sample is weighted to ensure it is representative of the population of that metro area. Sample sizes range from a low of 745 for Birmingham, Ala., to a high of 11,362 for the New York City metro area.

Hiring activity appears to be a bit stronger in the larger U.S. metro areas than in the U.S. as a whole, given that all but 15 of the 50 most populous metro areas have Job Creation Index scores higher than the +26 national average. The full data for each of the largest metro areas appear at the end of the article.

The areas with the lowest index scores among the top 50 MSAs are New York, San Diego and Hartford, Conn., at +20, and Virginia Beach-Norfolk, Va., and Las Vegas at +21. Although these scores are the lowest in a relative sense, they are still strong in an absolute sense.

More Good News on the Portland Jobs Front

Related Slideshow: What Jobs You Would Need to Afford These 25 Portland Neighborhoods

Homestead

Buckman

Mt. Tabor

Montavilla

Sellwood Moreland

Brentwood-Darlington (SE)

Centennial (East)

Cully (Mid Northeast)

Concordia (NE Portland)

Irvington (Inner NE)

Boise (Inner North)

Humboldt (Inner North)

Overlook

Pearl

Portmouth

St. Johns

Hayhurst

Forest Park

Lents

Kerns

Hazelwood

Oldtown / Chinatown

South Portland

Brooklyn

Madison South

Related Articles

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Most Popular Articles

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast