The Oregon economy is definitely on the mend. That’s the view of private economist Bill Conerly, who points to the past two months of job growth as a sign of a continuing turnaround in the new year: “If you can get two or three months of good news and only one or two months of bad news, then you’re on an upward trajectory. And that’s where we’ll be in 2011.” He says it'll be a slow recovery, and the unemployment rate will likely stay around 10% as people who'd given up, return to the job market.