Oregon's unemployment rate is its lowest in 25 years. In 1995 for the first time in the state's history forest-related industries were replaced as the leading employer. High technology is now number one. And still, Oregon is among the nation's leading producers of timber, despite the reductions in old growth logging. Owls and old growth forests are being protected.
Unemployment is low as the number of jobs increases, even in Oregon's most timber-dependent areas.
Thanks to the job retraining programs and economic incentives for businesses, new employment opportunities are not minimum wage service industry jobs with little room for advancement, but skills-laden opportunities in diverse fields. Instead of being up to their necks in owls and jobless millworkers, Oregonians are up to their ears in jobs and unemployment rates throughout the state are largely lower than the national average. And although the carefully crafted rhetoric pulled along many in its wake, the success of Oregon's economy is testament to the power of integrative ideas that shun the new Republican mentality that equates compromise with capitulation. Many shortsighted and self-interested politicians, and almost the entirety of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, would have you believe that today there is no room for compromise. Yet they would also have you believe that a repeal of all environmental protection, including laws limiting air and water pollution, protecting endangered species, and maintaining our national parks and protected areas is necessary for the economic health of our country.