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More visitors should be heading to the Pacific Northwest this summer over last year. That’s according to industry insiders around the region. They are a generally optimistic bunch, and they said the same thing last year. They were on the mark for the most part. We’ll tell you which areas in the Northwest are expected to do well, and a couple of developments the industry is closely watching.

The number of pipeline proposals to get natural gas from Alaska’s North Slope to market has been whittled down to one. We’ll tell you how the surviving plan has grown, and what it might take for the pipeline to finally get built.

Unemployment rates continued to trend down in cities across the Northwest. In March, they declined in all but two metro areas. See how your city fared in this issue’s PNW Snapshot.

Northwest community banks collectively had a breakthrough quarter of sorts: for the first time since the recession, they didn’t register a decline in their loan portfolios. But the underlying data and industry scuttlebutt expose some weakness behind the gains. We’ll tell you what we are hearing from insiders about last quarter and why one expected trend has yet to develop.

Investors had a lot to cheer about with Amazon.com’s first-quarter performance. They pushed shares of the Seattle-based Internet retailing giant up 16% the day after the company released its earnings report. Learn how Amazon blew past analysts’ expectations and why it may need those proposed buildings in downtown Seattle sooner rather than later.

The region’s breweries continue to hold their own against their national competitors. Learn which breweries ranked among the top 50 in terms of sales last year, and which up-and-comer made a big move in 2011.

How did the Northwest’s 10 largest companies by market capitalization fare last quarter? We give you the key statistics you need to know in this issue’s PNW Snapshot.

One of Washington’s largest crops had a record-setting year in 2011. Strong prices, production, and yield drove this commodity’s sales over the billion-dollar mark for the first time. Learn why this year also looks promising for this crop, and why another key product is looking like it will face a repeat of last year.

Is the worst of the recession behind us? That may be the case, according to new data on state tax collections from the U.S. Census Bureau. Tax collections in the Northwest outpaced the national average. We dig into the data and look at each state’s main source of tax collections and how much they increased in the past fiscal year.

The boom around oil production at the Bakken Formation in eastern Montana and North Dakota is also creating a burden for some. We’ll tell you about one solution some people hope to launch, and how much longer the oil rigs will be around.

In this issue’s PNW Snapshot, we highlight the healthiest counties in each state around the Northwest.

Fears of a bubble in cropland prices have largely been confined to the Midwest. But that may be changing. We’ll tell you all the factors that have come together over the past year in the Pacific Northwest that are applying upward pressure on farmland prices around the region.

Personal income grew in every state in the Northwest last year, just as it did in 2010. But the factors driving 2011’s gains show an improving economy. Learn what drove the improvement and how key industries in each state fared in 2011.

We share with you the latest developments in proposals for export coal terminals and which state was on track to see its first initial public offering since 2004.

Find out which counties posted the largest increases in wages last year in PNW Snapshot.

Jim Murez

Jim Murez joined Random Lengths in 2009 as Editor of Marple's Northwest Business Letter. For the previous 15-plus years he was an editor at newspapers around Oregon, most recently at The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon.

Michael J. Parks

Michael J. Parks is Editor Emeritus of Marple's Letter and a respected speaker on the Pacific Northwest Economy. He's the "dean of Pacific Northwest economy watchers," says The Seattle Times.