The high-tech sector, one of Oregon’s most significant industries, is having difficulty finding sufficiently educated workers, Intel Oregon communications manager Bill MacKenzie told local business representatives at Economic Forecast 2006 on Wednesday.
Intel’s facility in Aloha, Ore., near Portland, has 16,500 employees and is Intel’s largest site in the world, MacKenzie said.
MacKenzie said the technology sector was originally drawn to Oregon because of the strong kindergarten-through-college education system, a skilled work force and the reasonably priced supply of energy and water.
Now, Oregon’s energy prices are among the nation’s highest, industrial land is not used efficiently and the education system is not measuring up, MacKenzie said.
To illustrate how the Oregon educational system fails in high school and beyond, MacKenzie asked everyone in the audience, divided into 56 10-person tables, to raise their hands. Seventeen of these groups were asked to lower their hands, to signify that they had dropped out of high school. Fourteen graduated from high school but didn’t go on to college, and 14 went to college but didn’t graduate within six years. Only the people at 13 tables – less than a quarter of the room – still had their hands up at the end, signifying the percentage of Oregon high school freshmen who go on to graduate from college.
“And you think we’re going to beat Malaysia? You’re crazy,” MacKenzie said.
University economics professor Larry Singell, Jr., said that while Oregon ranks 12th in the nation on number of jobs lost to outsourcing, the impact has been relatively small. While nine industries have lost a total of 300,000 jobs, that is less than 1 percent of the 56.7 million jobs that those industries have.
Land availability, MacKenzie said, is only one of many factors that affect cities’ livability and the growth of businesses therein, said Tim Duy, director of the Oregon Economic Forum and adjunct assistant professor of economics at the University. Oregon ranked ninth in the nation in growth of real gross state product from 1990 to 2004, and averages annual job growth above the national average, Duy added.
Oregon business is also influenced by the Latino population, which grew 140 percent between 1990 and 2000, said Hector Zavala, president and CEO of Sun Stone Communications.
The new population, Zavala added, is increasingly better-educated, wealthier and more fluent in English. Many have started their own businesses or aspire to
do so, and they spend more than average on groceries and children’s clothing because of their larger than average families.
The event, presented at the Eugene Hilton by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, the Register-Guard and the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, concluded with economists’ predictions for Oregon in 2006.
Tom Potiowsky, an economist for the State of Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, said the growth of the past two years will continue, but at a slower rate.
Bill Conerly, principal of Conerly Consulting LLC, predicted a “solid but unspectacular” year. Because more jobs are becoming available, workers who previously stayed in jobs they were unhappy with because of lack of alternatives may begin seeking new jobs, so Conerly advised employers to limit turnover by treating employees well.
Brian Rooney, regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department, predicted that the 1.5 to 2 percent annualized employment growth of late 2005 would continue this year.
John Mitchell, economist for U.S. Bancorp, Western Region and principal of M & H Economic Consultants, said that because of an aging population, the native labor force in the United States has stopped growing, and employers are having difficulty filling positions ranging from truck drivers to accountants.
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