Oregon Jobs and Economy

Good GOD, if ever you desired to live in a low wage, dead end service-based economy combined with a high cost of living... Southern Oregon is your place. Gas is expensive, food costs are high, utilities constantly rising, ... and, thanks to a flood of Californians, the housing market has gone through the roof. It's the perfect storm of absolute financial misery. Sure, if you move here with a pile of money in your pocket, you might feel insulated... but even the California transplants are bitching these days.

Although large numbers of retirees continue to show up, many Californians who have moved into Oregon are of working age... and they are shocked at the extremely limited employment opportunities. Worse yet, discovery follows that the overwhelming majority of jobs available are minimum wage...

Some attempt the entrepreneurial route... but it can be a tough row to hoe, so to speak. The community is configured of an odd mix of both poverty-level incomes and of those with money, who shop as though they're in a remote Mexican village.

Still want to leave California, but hoping to find something unspoiled? Here are some suggestions: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Uzbekistan and Malaysia.

*You'll often run into these skinflints at garage sales (which is the official sport of Southern Oregon by the way).

Finally, it's necessary to touch on the massive homeless population that now exists in Oregon. Again, we must throw out a huge THANK YOU to California for this burgeoning population of scroungy, stinky and usually criminally-inclined begmeisters that seem to inhabit every offramp and store frontage.

Witness a dead-end economy, where pawn shops, payday-loan outlets and buy-here pay-here car lots conduct brisk business. Predatory lending is King; poverty-level income & poor credit ratings the norm. The perpetual downward spiral ensues.