Portland Mortgage Market Update — February 27, 2026

Rates are lower this morning on news of a… higher than expected inflation report? Yes, that appears to be the case but is counter to pretty much everything we have seen, so what exactly is going on? The Producer Price Index which measures inflation on the wholesale level was released today and was expected to come in in at 0.3%. Instead, it came in 0.5%. Usually, this kind of miss would kill interest rates, but it seems investors are looking under the hood on this report and seeing that most of the increase is coming from food, energy and trade and if you strip those out inflation is right in line with the 0.3% estimate.

The BLS Checked its math from last year Q2 and it's not good. The BLS released its Business Employment Dynamics report which is kind of like a pre-cursor their QCEW (which is a quarterly audit). Today's BED report was from April-June of 2025. During this time last year, the BLS reported an increase of 74,000 jobs. The BED reviewed those numbers and made a revision to that, saying they need to adjust the figures downward by 400,000! This is a recurring theme with the BLS and is exceedingly frustrating because if the report had accurately been showing massive job losses last year we would have seen rates drop.

At least one Fed Member is calling for drastically lower rates. Stephen Miran, the Fed's newest member is now calling for 4 cuts of 25 basis points and hinted that the first cut could happen sooner rather than later. Miran previously served as chair of the Council Economic Advisors to President Trump so it is no surprise that he is calling for cuts—he has done so at every Fed meeting he has attended thus far, but it is the severity and aggressive nature of these cuts that is worth noting. Hopefully the rest of the Fed can get on board.