About Oregon Business Insider, OBI’s Free Newsletter
Oregon Business Insider, a free monthly newsletter created by Oregon Business & Industry (OBI), appears on the first Wednesday of every month.
Oregon Business Insider is intended for anyone who’s interested in Oregon’s business environment. You do not need to be an OBI member to receive Oregon Business Insider.
Each edition includes information about noteworthy events, legal and regulatory updates, timely data and rankings, links to recent Oregon Business Matters podcast episodes, policy explainers and more.
Feel free to share this newsletter with people in your networks, who can subscribe by following the link above.
The Month that Was: Three Things that Happened
Each edition of Oregon Business Insider features three notable things that happened during the previous month and three things to expect in the coming month. Here’s what happened in May:
Revenue forecast: On May 20, Oregon’s Office of Economic Analysis presented the Economic and Revenue Forecast for the second quarter. According to the forecast, Oregon’s economy continues to grow more slowly than the national average, and the unemployment rate continues to exceed the national average. Nonetheless, the state continues to collect abundant tax revenue. Net general fund revenue is expected to reach $35.69 billion for the 2025-27 biennium, $139 million more than expected at the close of the 2025 legislative session. Read OBI’s full take on the forecast here and the forecast itself here.
Primary election: As expected, the May 19 primary election set up a rematch between Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan and incumbent Gov. Tina Kotek for the state’s top elective office. Also as expected, Oregonians trounced the transportation funding measure headlined by a gas-tax hike. A few other results deserve note as well, beginning with a pair of Washington County primary elections. Incumbent Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, lost narrowly to democratic socialist Myra Munoz. And in the race for an open Beaverton House seat, democratic socialist Tammy Carpenter narrowly defeated Beaverton City Councilor Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg. Both Democratic candidates are nearly certain to win in November, moving Oregon in a less moderate direction. In more encouraging news, voters in Lane County overwhelmingly rejected a countywide ballot measure that would have granted rights to waterways and connected ecosystems and threatened punitive legal consequences for violations. For OBI’s take on the election, check out OBI’s June 1 member newsletter here.
‘Global Trade Desk’: On May 18, Gov. Kotek announced the launch of an online contact portal maintained by Business Oregon, the state’s business development agency, for companies interested in international trade and investment. The portal, dubbed the Global Trade Desk, promises a response within 24 hours to questions involving international trade by Oregon companies or Oregon investment by businesses in other countries. Go here to use the contact portal.
The Month Ahead: Three Things to Watch
Here are three things to watch for in June:
Legislative Committee Days: From June 15-17, state legislative committees will hold informational hearings on topics that could lead to proposals during the 2027 legislative session. Agendas will be posted online as June legislative committee days approach, and video access to hearings will be available. Legislative committee days also will take place in September, November and December. To monitor all legislative action, including committee days, go to the Oregon Legislative Information System here.
Prosperity Council recommendations: By June 30, the 16-member Governor’s Prosperity Council will release its highly anticipated list of recommendations to improve the state’s economy. The governor formed the Prosperity Council to recommend short-term and long-term strategies to meet the strategic goals listed in Oregon’s Prosperity Roadmap, which she released in December 2025. Those strategic goals include accelerating the state’s economy (which grew at only 1% in 2025), increasing living wage jobs and retaining Oregon businesses. Read the recommendations OBI submitted to the Governor’s Prosperity Council here.
Air program rulemaking: If you’re an afficionado of rulemaking – the process by which administrative agencies implement and update laws – here’s one for you. On June 30, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality will hold the last of four rulemaking advisory committee meetings related to “toxicity reference values” under the state’s stringent (and incredibly complex) Cleaner Air Oregon program. Toxicity reference values, broadly speaking, are concentrations of airborne substances deemed by the state to be associated with health risks. During this rulemaking, DEQ is proposing to adjust toxicity reference values for 303 chemicals, making the most stringent air toxics regulatory program in the country even more stringent. Due to the highly technical nature of the rulemaking, OBI has engaged ToxStrategies, a nationally recognized consultancy that works frequently with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is very difficult for businesses to keep up with complex policies like Cleaner Air Oregon, particularly when they depart so significantly from regulatory programs elsewhere in the country.
Spotlight: Oregon Economic Summit Highlights Challenges
What happened: The business leaders and elected officials who attended OBI’s inaugural Oregon Economic Summit on May 28 heard a message that is both familiar and increasingly urgent: Oregon’s economy and residents continue to struggle as state and local policies erode its competitiveness. Roughly half a dozen speakers and panelists examined Oregon’s economic and competitive problems from different perspectives, and OBI President and CEO Angela Wilhelms concluded by urging state leaders to start taking the steps needed to change the state’s trajectory.
The national context: Keynote speaker Ted Abernathy, a partner with North Carolina-based Economic Leadership, shared data illustrating Oregon’s slipping competitiveness relative to other states (view his slides here). Employment in Oregon, for example, increased only 1.9% from 2019-2025, less than any of its neighboring states and well below the national average of 5%. Over the same period, state GDP growth (10.9%) also trailed all neighboring states and the national average (15.1%). The decline of Oregon’s manufacturing sector has been particularly steep. Oregon’s manufacturing index ranking fell from an enviable 7th in 2018 to 36th in 2025. Oregon has lagged even in measures of entrepreneurialism, historically a state strength. From January 2020 to December 2025, Oregon ranked only 40th nationally for new business formations. The takeaway: States are competing fiercely for business investment and for talented employees, and Oregon is being left behind.
Views from Oregon: Following Abernathy’s overview of Oregon’s competitiveness, a panel of Oregon experts addressed many of the same issues from differing perspectives. Moderated by Papé Group President and CEO Jordan Papé, the panel included Monique Cardwell, president and CEO of Greater Portland Inc.; John Horvick, senior vice president of DHM Research; Tim Inman, chief policy and public affairs officer with The Ford Family Foundation; and Mike Wilkerson, partner with ECOnorthwest (read their bios here). While there isn’t room here to capture the full conversation, there was general agreement on two points: Oregon continues to enjoy the same natural advantages that have drawn so many people here during periods of economic and competitive strength; and the notion that conditions that help businesses necessarily hurt workers is utterly false. Conditions in which businesses thrive, in fact, support the creation of more and better jobs, not to mention greater tax revenue.
Call to action: OBI President and CEO Angela Wilhelms concluded the summit by arguing that Oregon can, once again, become a beacon of opportunity and prosperity. For that to happen, however, policymakers must reconsider the harmful policies that have eroded the state’s competitiveness and bogged down its economy in recent years. In addition, they must check the habit of reflexively villainizing business. Broadly attacking the entrepreneurs, owners and investors who employ 1.7 million Oregonians and produce billions of tax dollars annually is deeply misguided.
Jobs champion recognized: Despite regulatory and other challenges, building a great business remains possible in Oregon, as Mike Keiser, the recipient of OBI’s Jobs Champion Award, has shown. Mike founded the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, a bucket-list golf destination on Oregon’s south coast that employs hundreds of people, supports many nearby businesses and generates substantial philanthropic activity. Mike was honored during the Oregon Economic Summit. Read the announcement here.
Learn more: Much of the data, rankings and historical trends discussed during the Oregon Economic Summit can be found on OBI’s regularly updated Oregon Scorecard.
Statistic of the Month: Establishment Births and Deaths
Establishment births, deaths: Because these terms are a bit arcane, some explanation is in order. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks this data, an establishment is an “economic unit that produces goods or services, usually at a single physical location.” In simple terms, an establishment is a business location that has employees. It can be a single business or one of multiple locations operated by a business. A birth refers to an establishment that is reporting employees for the first time, and a death is an establishment that has reported no employees for four consecutive quarters. That confirmation period causes death data to lag birth data by several months.
Why does this matter? If you’d like to dig deeper, check out this 1998 paper by a BLS economist or this 2008 article by a different BLS economist. Meanwhile, an economist with the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, an advocacy organization, shared a good, plain-English explanation of the importance of births and deaths in May: “Business establishment deaths are a fact of life in a dynamic economy, but they become a more considerable economic concern when deaths outdistance births, and when such deaths can be linked to some degree to burdensome governmental costs, such as taxes and regulations.”
Oregon births and deaths: The BLS has reported both birth and death data only through the end of 2024. In that year, Oregon ranked among the bottom half of states by average quarterly birth rate (28th to be exact) and among the top half in terms of average quarterly death rate (13th highest death rate). This balance is not ideal. If you’re going to be among the national leaders in terms of establishment deaths, you really want to be among the leaders as well in terms of establishment births.
Numbers vs. rates: What about the number (rather than rate) of establishment births and deaths? After all, that’s the statistic mentioned in the above quote. The picture here is worrisome for Oregon as well. Note the crossover point in the chart above, which shows that 2024 is the first year since 2010 in which establishment deaths in Oregon exceeded births. To be fair, Oregon isn’t alone in this regard. Deaths exceeded births in 2024 in nearby Idaho as well, though they did not in the U.S. at large.
2025 establishment births: The real eye-popper is the dramatic dropoff in the number of establishment births in Oregon for the first three quarters of 2025 (see chart above). It has fallen off a cliff. Over the first three quarters of 2025, meanwhile, Oregon ranked only 44th nationally in terms of average quarterly birth rate, plummeting from 28th for a full year in 2024. In terms of establishment births over the same period, Idaho rebounded while the U.S. experienced only a modest decrease.
Waiting for Q4: The BLS plans to release fourth-quarter establishment birth data at the end of July, so we’ll revisit the numbers in the August Oregon Business Insider. Meanwhile, establishment-death data will continue to lag behind birth data, making timely direct comparisons impossible. The state’s trend is certainly worrisome, however, and it argues for a focus on the governmental costs driving it.
Oregon Business Matters Talks with Con-Vey’s Dave Larecy
Oregon Business Matters is OBI’s biweekly podcast. It features interviews with state business and political leaders, economists, academics, pollsters – all with a focus on issues that matter to Oregon’s businesses.
This month’s spotlight episode is our interview with Dave Larecy, chairman and CEO of Roseburg-based Con-Vey. For decades, the company has manufactured production lines for wood products and other industries. Con-Vey makes the machinery that other companies use to make plywood, beams, oriented strand board and many other things that make modern life possible. Con-Vey’s production lines are so sophisticated and so highly automated that it has even established its own robotics business, 7robotics. Listen to this fascinating conversation about an Oregon company that manufactures machinery used by businesses across the country – and in other countries as well. Listen to the interview here.
You can check out all of Oregon Business Matters’ episodes on OBI’s website here.
You can also subscribe to the Oregon Business Matters podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Opportunities to Engage
If you would like timely opportunities to engage in the political process, please consider signing up with the Oregon Prosperity Initiative. Participation will allow you to send comment letters to key legislators and policymakers in support of policies that would improve Oregon’s economic competitiveness – and in opposition to policies that would erode it. It’s an easy way to help improve Oregon’s business climate.
About Oregon Business & Industry
OBI is Oregon’s statewide chamber of commerce and also Oregon’s affiliate for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation. OBI works tirelessly as the voice of business in Salem, pursuing policies necessary to support a prosperous private sector.
OBI members enjoy many benefits, including opportunities to participate in OBI’s policy-setting committees, participation in OBI events, regular communications about key public policy developments, and access to cost-saving programs, including:
HealthChoice: Helps businesses with fewer than 100 employees offer comprehensive health-care benefits through our partnership with Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon.
Partners Retirement Plan: Allows multiple employers to offer a 401(k) benefit to employees through a group structure while maintaining individual company design and control over the benefit – such as eligibility, employer match, and vesting.
CompSAFE: Helps eligible companies enjoy workers’ compensation discounts through SAIF Corporation.
Fuel Program: Helps members save fuel costs through our partnership with Ed Staub & Sons.
LegalPLUS: OBI members receive 15 minutes of free legal consulting per month from Innova Legal Advisors.
Go here to learn more about OBI, here to learn more about OBI’s member benefits and here to talk with OBI about becoming a member.