The rate at which unemployment grew in Portland over the last year outstripped every other major U.S. city – including Detroit, Richard Read reports today for The Oregonian (http://bit.ly/UCqKT).
The jobless stats for May 2009 showed an increase of 6.7 percentage points from May 2008, to an unemployment rate of 11.6 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Detroit’s year-over-year stats for May were just a tad lower, showing an increase of 6.6 percent. However, the overall employment rate in Detroit is higher than in Portland. Read’s story, as currently posted, doesn’t give us the overall employment rate for Detroit. But we checked, and it’s 14.9 percent. (http://bit.ly/Dc07X) The greater Portland area includes once-bustling Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River. None of the rates in the report are seasonally adjusted.