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December data released Tuesday by the University of Oregon shows growth in construction on par with the rates in 1998 for most metropolitan areas in the state.

That means growth rates are nowhere near where they were during the boom years, said Timothy Duy, director of the Oregon Economic Forum and a professor at the University of Oregon.

Duy authors the Oregon Regional Economic Indicators, which measure growth in several areas – including construction employment and residential building permits. Over the past year and a half, residential building permit numbers in Portland, Eugene, Salem, Medford and Central Oregon have improved, but growth has been listless compared with the period prior to the recession, he said.

“The concern for construction firms is that while in a lot of places residential building permits have been improving lately,” he said, “… where are we going to get the people to build this stuff?”

Duy said the region is not coming out of this recession as strongly as it has from past ones. Oregon’s economy is poised to expand in 2014, he added, but at a relatively average pace.

“Maybe we’ll see some acceleration this year as the U.S. economy improves and regional areas improve,” he said. “We’ve had this recovery, but it is still in many dimensions tepid compared to previous expansions.”