Portland Mortgage Market Update — July 2, 2026

It was Jobs week and multiple reports told a tale of a weakening jobs market, punctuated today with the BLS report for June which showed 57K new payrolls vs the 110K expected. With the BLS report the payroll numbers come from a survey of businesses, but the other component (the unemployment rate) comes from household surveys and the unemployment rate come in at 4.2% vs the 4.3% expected. On the surface this looks pretty good, but if you dig deeper the report shows there were 507K job losses during the month and the only reason the unemployment improved was because 720K people left the workforce (or have been unemployed 6+ months and rare no longer included in the calculation).

The report also issued downward revisions on previous months reports, which is not uncommon as more businesses complete their surveys. Interestingly, the reports show a steep dropoff of hiring in the Leisure & Hospitality sector, indicating that the rosy jobs reports we have seen the past couple of months were buoyed by companies staffing up to accommodate an influx of business brought about by the World Cup.

With the weaker jobs numbers and easing gas prices, the Fed should feel less pressure to hike rates in the near term. However that didn't stop one Fed member, Beth Hammack, from popping off stoking fears about inflation. In a CNBC interview, Hammack said the higher oil prices will cause inflation to rise due to the cost to transport everything, and in the same breath said lower oil prices will ALSO cause inflation to rise due to consumers having more discretionary income. She also said that as AI improves it will also cause more inflation despite history showing these advances in technology as being deflationary. In a relatively slow news week, her comments snapped the rally that mortgage rates were having but thankfully we are trying to recover this morning off the weaker BLS jobs report.