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Chris Casey The Roseburg News-Review February 29, 2004
Douglas County, called the 100 valleys of the Umpqua, is geographically a land of lifts and dips.
Employment-wise, however, it’s been mired in a sustained dip.There was a time when the county’s abundant natural resources provided plentiful employment. In 1958, 45 percent of all jobs in Douglas County, almost one in two, were in the timber industry, according to state statistics.
In 2002, manufacturing, including lumber, made up 17 percent of the employment pie. Government, including tribal government, was the largest local sector at 20 percent.
In the past year, manufacturing and government lost the most jobs locally — about 500 and 325, respectively.
At the end of 2003, Douglas County’s unemployment level was 9.3 percent, one of the highest in the state. But that’s a far cry from the early 1980s, when the county’s unemployment skyrocketed to 17.2 percent.
Nonetheless, the appetite for jobs is strong. A spokeswoman for Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse said more than 3,000 people applied for 160 jobs available at the soon-to-open store in Roseburg.
Top 10 private employers
Following are the top 10 private sector employers in Douglas County:1. Roseburg Forest Products 3,000
2. Mercy Healthcare Inc. 1,418
3. Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians businesses 1,100 (870 at Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort)
4. Superior Lumber Co. 650
5. Ingram Book Co. 450
6. Dell Inc. call center 320
7. Bayliner 305
8. Wal-Mart 265
9. Murphy Plywood 250
10. Telecommunications Management Services 238SERVICE ECONOMY
Norm Gershon, president of Umpqua Training & Employment, said the “ghost town” many predicted for Roseburg after the collapse of the timber industry has not come to pass.“Ours, like so many communities across America, has become a ’service economy,’ ” he said in an e-mail to The News-Review. “People are adaptable, and they are living on less.”
He said jobs are springing up locally in big box stores, financial institutions, health care, the gaming industry and professional occupations.
“And, of course, there are new twists in the wood products industry, i.e. the new Roseburg Forest Products Riddle plant, (RFP’s) retooling of sawmill No. 1 in Dillard, Huffman-Wright’s diversion from logging to road building, the Sohns’ (owners of Lone Rock Timber Co.) move from milling to land development are all testament to local innovation and industriousness,” Gershon said.
Despite recent setbacks to the forest and wood products industry — most notably the layoff of 670 Roseburg Forest Products workers in 2003 — it remains the largest business sector in the county, employing about 6,450 workers.
Bob Ragon, executive director of Douglas Timber Operators, said 2004 should see the region’s timber industry stabilizing, based on current low mortgage interest rates and the weak dollar.
“I think we’re going to have a strong year, so employment in our sector is stable and may go up from where we’re at now,” he said.
Variables such as interest rates, dollar exchange rates and politics make a long-term outlook a gamble, Ragon said. “Anybody that wants to tell you about ‘05 is nuts.”
Rob Abbott, Douglas County work force analyst for the Oregon Employment Office, said it appears the regional lumber industry may have bottomed out.
“What we’re looking at from here on out is very slow growth because of advances in fibers and wood products,” he said.
According to OED projections, the production sector, which includes manufacturing occupations, is expected to grow by only 170 jobs over the next decade in Douglas County. The slow pace is largely due to outsourcing and technological advances.
He said the spread of regional fiber optic networks will translate to more jobs, both at phone companies and call centers.
“But still those are service-sector jobs, which are lower-wage compared to lumber and wood products, which pretty much everything (locally) is gauged on,” he said.
In 2002, average wages in Douglas County were just above $28,000, below that of Oregon ($34,000) and the U.S. ($36,500).
Graham Slater, the Oregon Employment Department’s research administrator, spoke at a local Business Outlook Forum in December. He said take-home pay, for both the state and Douglas County, was at its peak in 1978 when it averaged out across all industries at about $34,000 (in current dollars).
That was at a time high-wage industries — lumber and construction — were doing very well, he said. “Even when some (of those jobs) came back, they came back often at much lower wages, and we’ve never made that ground back.”
The county’s shift from manufacturing to service occupations is largely behind that income drop, according to employment officials.
Another is demographics. More and more, the county is a bastion for retirees, many of whom work part-time service jobs to supplement their fixed incomes.
Between 1990 and 1997, 60 percent of the county’s new residents were 65 and older, compared to 25 percent in Lane County and 11 percent in the state overall.
Aging baby boomers will increase the number of replacement openings in the county as they retire, the OED says. The most recent projections call for 10,624 replacement openings in the county between 2002 and 2012.
“They’re good workers, they know how to work. They’ve spent a lifetime doing it,” Abbott said of older workers. “One of the bad things is it might slow growth in wages here in Douglas County compared to the rest of the state.”
Income averages Median family income for a family of four:
Roseburg $40,172
Sutherlin $34,414
Green $40,400
Winston $36,006
Reedsport $33,689
Tri City $37,301
Myrtle Creek $40,000
Glide $45,313
Canyonville $31,500
Yoncalla $31,250
Drain $34,231
Riddle $37,159
Oakland $35,795
Glendale $30,278
Winchester Bay $37,292
Elkton $34,792Douglas County $39,364
Oregon $48,680
United States $50,046
Source: U.S. Census BureauJOBS FORECAST
While the lumber industry is expected to shed about 200 jobs over the next decade, all other local sectors are forecast to gain a collective 4,410 jobs, an 11.8 percent gain. That puts Douglas County in the middle of the pack county-wise for job growth statewide, Slater said. The county’s services and the retail trade sectors are expected to lead job growth over the next decade, posting about 1,500 and 1,300 new jobs respectively.“Services is where all the health care and social services will be,” Slater said. “Incidentally, services does not have to be low wage. Services includes consultants and doctors and hospitals, computer companies … . It’s not necessarily minimum-wage work.”
Most of the Lowe’s jobs reportedly pay slightly higher than minimum wage.
Meanwhile, some of Douglas County’s largest existing employers are expecting to hire significant numbers of workers in the coming years.
Kathleen Nickel, director of communications at Mercy Medical Center, said the hospital will especially be hiring nurses and technicians, such as radiologists, in coming years. Currently, Mercy Healthcare Inc. employs 1,418, making it the second-largest employer in the county.
In nursing, “the projections across the country show the shortage is pretty phenomenal, so we certainly will be filling positions in that area,” she said.
The hospital is currently undergoing a $40 million expansion.
Meanwhile, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians is in the midst of a $25 million Creekside Development, largely a water treatment facility project in Canyonville.
Sue Shaffer, tribe chairwoman, said the development will result in several hundred new jobs over the next few years.
“What the public doesn’t know is we’re adding a few jobs here and there all the time,” she said.
The Cow Creeks are the county’s third-largest employer with 1,100 workers spread out among their various businesses. The bulk of those workers, about 870, are employed at Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort in Canyonville.
Wayne Shammel, attorney for the Cow Creeks, said, “our intention is to put on other businesses and grow the existing businesses, consolidate things regionally.”
Commute time to work - Average time spent commuting to work, one-way:
Roseburg 15 minutes
Sutherlin 21 minutes
Green 17 minutes
Winston 15 minutes
Reedsport 18 minutes
Tri City 19 minutes
Myrtle Creek 26 minutes
Glide 25 minutes
Canyonville 22 minutes
Yoncalla 25 minutes
Drain 27 minutes
Riddle 19 minutes
Oakland 21 minutes
Glendale 19 minutes
Winchester Bay 9 minutes
Elkton 28 minutesDouglas County 20 minutes; 78 percent drove alone, 0.4 percent used public transportation
Oregon 22 minutes, 73 percent drove alone, 4.2 percent used public transportation
United States 26 minutes, 75.7 percent drove alone, 4.7 percent used public transportationSource: U.S. Census Bureau
HELP WANTED
Other local businesses boosting payrolls include Bayliner Marine, North River Jet Boats, ComSpan USA Communications, Hoover Treated Wood Products, American Bridge Co., Dell Inc. and Telecommunications Management Services (TMS).Bayliner Marine, a division of Brunswick Corp., has added about 110 employees over the past two years, according to plant manager Duane Schneider. Bayliner, which produces fiberglass recreational boats, currently employs about 305 workers at its plant north of Roseburg.
North River Jet Boats has also been growing. The Roseburg-based company expanded into commercial and military vessels with its acquisition of Tacoma, Wash.-based Almar boats in 2001. Now North River is greatly increasing its work force and its plant capacity. The company, currently at 185 workers, plans to hire 128 more over the next two years as it expands into a new manufacturing facility in Green and a new worker training center in Wilbur.
Like North River, Hoover Treated Wood Products and ComSpan USA are adding physical capacity to their headquarters.
Hoover plans to hire 50 workers over the next 2 1/2 years in Dillard, and ComSpan, a new Roseburg telephone company, expects to add 50 workers to its current staff of about 50 by next summer.
Roseburg’s two largest call centers are in expansion mode, too.
Dell last fall added 9,000 square feet to its Roseburg sales call center, which it opened in September 2002. The company currently employs about 400 people locally, with capacity to hire on at least a hundred more.
Because it acquired some new clients, TMS recently hired 45 more phone agents.
TMS primarily takes phone orders for catalog companies, but also takes calls from customers ordering products they saw advertised on TV.
TMS now has 238 employees, 218 of whom are agents. Most of the 45 new employees had worked for the company before, as seasonal hires over the holidays.
“Those people are all very busy, so we may even have to hire some more people,” said Chuck Schnautz, chief financial officer for TMS.