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Six months of building permit data just released by the Oregon Employment Department showed a dramatic multifamily building boom taking place in Portland.

The data, which ran from the beginning of the year through June 30, accounts for single-family and multifamily building permits in Portland and outer communities in the Portland Metropolitan Statistical Area, a seven county region that includes Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Columbia and Yamhill counties in Oregon and Clark and Skamania counties in Washington state.

In Portland, 2,829 residential permits were filed from Jan. 1 through June 30, with 2,454 of those for multifamily projects.

By comparison, the entire region had 5,937 residential permits, including 3,123 multifamily permits, according to Christian Kaylor, a workforce economist for the Oregon Employment Department.

For the city of Portland, the multifamily building boom has been accelerating. The city had 1,300 multifamily building permits filed in the first six months of 2013 and 2,454 in the same time period of 2014, an 88.7 percent increase.

“It’s the biggest residential building boom we’ve seen in at least 25 years,” Kaylor said of Portland’s growth. “My sense is that it could be the biggest residential building boom since the shipbuilding era of the 1940s.”

While Portland is growing at historic rates, many of its suburbs are experiencing recession-era permit levels, Kaylor said. Milwaukie and Tualatin, for example, only had four and nine residential permits filed through June 30, respectively, according to the report. Forest Grove and Wilsonville, meanwhile, have experienced more modest residential permit growth with 82 and 141 permits filed, respectively.