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Job growth rate slows statewide Jackson County expects to add 1,800 next year By DAVID PRESZLER Fewer new jobs are expected in Jackson County and across the state next year, economists say. Oregon's job growth rate is expected to be 1.5 percent next year, down from this year's estimate of 2.4 percent, says John Mitchell, U.S. Bank's well-respected regional economist. Jackson County's job growth rate is expected to drop from about 3.5 percent this year (roughly 2,400 new nonfarm jobs) to 2.5 percent (1,800 jobs) in 1999, according to early projections by Oregon Employment Department economist John Anderson. The projected slowdown comes after a boom that saw the number of jobs statewide growing at about 4 percent per year for most of the 1990s. "If you look at Oregon coming down," Anderson says, "it's coming down off some rather spectacular years as far as its growth rate." For the past five years, Jackson County's job growth rate has fluctuated between 4.7 percent (1994) and 2.6 percent (1995). While Mitchell cites the Asian economic crisis as the driving force behind statewide declines, Anderson says its effect probably hasn't been felt as strongly here. Next year's job growth may be down in part because of the 450 jobs lost in the Sept. 7 fire that destroyed Boise Cascade's Medford plywood mill. Company officials are meeting late next week to discuss whether the mill will be rebuilt. If those jobs return at all, it won't be for at least a year because rebuilding the mill will take 12-18 months. Though the Asian crisis has hit the Portland area harder, it also has affected job growth here, according to Gordon Safley of Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development Inc. New jobs are created when new businesses open and existing ones expand, Safley says, and both are affected by the crisis and the uncertainty it brings. "The recruitment side is going to slow down, at least in manufacturing, until the Asia flu starts to pass," he says. "That same syndrome will probably cause a lot of our regional businesses who might have expansion plans to wait and see what's going on." Mitchell, who released the draft report earlier this week, writes that declines in the technology sector and the end of the construction boom will lead the slowdown. "The shadows from the Asian turmoil began to intrude into the state's consciousness in a series of announcements by firms whose expansion had helped power the the boom of the early 1990s," Mitchell writes in reviewing 1998. Cutbacks at retailing giant Nike and microchip powerhouse Intel, the state's largest manufacturing firm, were among the more dramatic in a string of reductions. Mitchell's conclusion that construction and technology will drive the statewide slowdown says more about the northern Oregon job picture than the Southern Oregon one, Anderson says. "An awful lot of the state numbers are weighted heavily by what goes on in the Portland-Salem area." For example, the bulk of the technology declines are tied to microchip manufacturing -- a prevalent industry in the Portland area but not in the Rogue Valley. Charles McHenry of the Southern Oregon Telecommunications and Technology Council says this region's high-tech companies -- which tend to be software-driven -- remain strong. "We're fine," he says. "This is the value of having a nonhardware-dependent technology sector. Local technology companies are certainly growing and expanding according to plan." The projected construction slowdown also appears to be more of a Portland phenomenon -- although it may also slow some in Southern Oregon. Anderson says a series of large projects in the Portland area have fueled the "statewide" boom. Many of those are either finished or in the final stages, so the industry is slowing. The Rogue Valley construction industry, both residential and commercial, appears strong, Anderson says. Russ Batzer of Batzer Construction, one of the area's leading commercial firms, says there's been no shortage of work. "We haven't seen it yet," he says when asked about a potential slowdown, "but all the indicators from the East Coast are headed that way. "I think every contractor in town has met their quota, so to speak. We are still in a growth spurt." The long-term job growth prospects look strong for Southern Oregon -- at least as long as transportation and other infrastructure can keep up, Anderson says. "Maybe the only thing that is going to slow us down," he says, "is that we are starting to run into our limitations." Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA