Seattle, Portland, Hot Cities of '90s, See Growth Slow With Age

[begingri]

By Peter Robison and Anthony Effinger

Tow-truck operator Matthew Gowen moved from Dallas to Seattle three years ago, landing a gig riding a bicycle rickshaw that he expected would be temporary.
“Here I am, still sitting on the same bike,” said Gowen, 29, shifting his pedals outside a Starbucks Corp. coffee shop in Seattle, the largest city in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, centered on Washington and Oregon states.

The region that was a darling of the 1990s, when companies including Starbucks and Microsoft Corp. hired workers by the thousands and influenced the popular culture, is still drawing migrants like Gowen, according to 2010 Census data released yesterday. It’s the jobs that are scarcer.

“People move here because they really want to live here,” said Charles Rynerson, senior demographic analyst for the Population Research Center at Portland State University, referring to the Northwest’s scenic beauty and pace of life. “To some extent they may have to accept less opportunity.”

Washington’s population increased 14.1 percent to 6,724,540 between 2000 and 2010, census data show. While that was above the national average of 9.7 percent and enough to gain an additional seat in the U.S. Congress, it was the slowest growth for the state since the 1930s.

Oregon’s population rose 12 percent to 3,831,074 since 2000, the slowest pace since the 1980s, census figures show.

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‘Level of Debt’

“It’s not Michigan; we’ve been a pretty attractive place,” McIntire said in an interview. “But in the past decade, we’re reached a level of debt that’s going to require that we exercise greater fiscal discipline.”

So far, income growth has compensated for the borrowing and helped maintain the state’s bond rating. Total income in the state rose 45 percent since 2000, 5 percent faster than the nation, McIntire said in a December report.

Moody’s Investors Service rates Washington’s bonds Aa1, the second-highest rating. Standard & Poor’s also has assigned Washington its second-highest rating, AA+.

There are signs that employment is stabilizing now, and the state will benefit from higher exports of agricultural goods and airplanes because of a weaker dollar, said Arun Raha, the chief economist for the state of Washington.

“We’re lagging the nation, but we’ll catch up,” Raha said. “I think by 2012 we’ll be ahead of the nation.”
Balancing on his rickshaw in downtown Seattle, Gowen said he’s come to another conclusion about his adopted state after sending out dozens of applications for jobs that might offer medical benefits and pay more than $3 a ride.

“It’s a great place. We’re just overpopulated.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...-maturity.html

[douglasm]

I can't say anything about Portland, but Seattle's suffered some by the delay in Boeing's new "Dreamliner", and although the area is a 3 industry town, the area [[and in turn, the whole state) has was hurt some by the Boeing slowdown. What won't hurt is the awarding of the Air Force tanker contract, which will be built around the 767 platform, which is expected to generate 11,000 new long term jobs in the Puget Sound over the next 18 months. Out here, Alcoa next week will restart a 3rd pot line at their Malaga smelter.

Part of what hurts Washington's revenues is we don't have an income tax. Conversely, Oregon suffers because it doesn't have a sales tax. Given the choice I think I'd rather have a sales tax [[although it's regressive, we can soak the tourists better), but states with both tend to have a little more balanced revenue stream.

The state IS hurting a bit. In the little town where I'm a councilman, the decline in sales tax revenues has hurt our municipal income, and cutbacks in state compensating funds and grant money will have an impact on us in a number of ways over a number of years.

Now although cuts in state funds because of revenues have had an impact on us, what concerns me more is the threatened halting of Community Development Block Grants on the federal level. We rely on these grants to help finance infrastructure improvement in our little town, and their loss will have a serious impact on small, generally low revenue, cities across the country.

[Jimaz]

... Seattle's suffered some by the delay in Boeing's new "Dreamliner", and although the area is a 3 industry town, the area [[and in turn, the whole state) has was hurt some by the Boeing slowdown. What won't hurt is the awarding of the Air Force tanker contract, which will be built around the 767 platform, which is expected to generate 11,000 new long term jobs in the Puget Sound over the next 18 months...

I worked on the Boeing 777. It was an unprecedented effort and an unprecedented success. Unprecedented celebrations ensued.

Then came the massive layoffs.

Now the 787 Dreamliner is nearly three years overdue. The correlation is evident. When their workers suffer, business has no choice but to share the misery.

"Those were the years, my friend." Very rarely do you meet people who are that dedicated and it's even harder to hire them back.

A sincere best of wishes sent to Boeing and all their contractors. Take comfort that this too shall pass.

[Novine]

Portland's looking pretty good from these stats.

http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/02/2...data-released/

[Lowell]

A big question mark for Seattle area has to be Microsoft. It is increasingly looking like a tired-out GM and seems adrift and in severe decline. It is getting massacred in the browser wars, operating systems, social networking and search. Even cash cows like its productivity software, like Word, Excel et. al, are being undercut by free cloud-based alternatives like Google Apps.

They totally missed the boat on mobile computing and have desperately thrown their lot in with another laggard, Nokia. It is probably to late to return to their predatory roots as in the days when they could steal Apple's OS and Netscape's browser.

[iheartthed]

Portland's looking pretty good from these stats.

http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/02/2...data-released/

Is the unemployment rate out there still incredibly high? For a while it was in striking distance of Michigan for the number 1 spot. I know someone who moved to Portland without a job, and from what I hear that's what a lot of people who move there do.

[douglasm]

Microsoft appears to be reletively stable at this time. They're not adding employees like they did in the past, but on the other hand, they're not laying anyone off, either. Nintendo, the other big electronics player in the market has also settled into a groove after years of growth.

Starbucks is the one that interests me. They've pretty much consolidated the bag coffee market around here, buying up Seattle's Best and Tully's, and it looks like they're going after California based Peet's Coffee and Tea. In doing so, they've, er....., bagged the largest brands of "botique" coffee in the west. They make a run at 8 O'Clock, then I'll worry.

But for all the computers and coffee, Boeing still drives the region. They are the primary labor employer in the Puget Sound area, and it lives or dies around Boeing.

[BrushStart]

Is the unemployment rate out there still incredibly high? For a while it was in striking distance of Michigan for the number 1 spot. I know someone who moved to Portland without a job, and from what I hear that's what a lot of people who move there do.

My buddy recently moved from downtown Detroit to Portland for quality of life reasons. I did my best to convince him to stick around, but the allure of Portland was just too much to overcome.

When he came back to town recently, I asked about the job situation in Portland, and he said it is totally different than here. Basically, there are many people who move to Portland [[quasi-hippies) who have no intention on working, so they never really look for employment. He said that any reasonable person who wants a job in Portland can find one, especially if they are not overly selective. If you want to work, someone will hire you. That's the difference. In Metro Detroit, there is very little work available for most people, no matter how qualified they are.

[FlyingJ]

i'm out of Seattle on my mom's side who blew outta Detroit during the
Grant Administration. If Boeing, like all aerospace companies, weren't so sketchy on long-term employment I never would've been born in Detroit. That said, I don't think anyone here should dance on the grave of Microsoft-it's like watching Jeff Gordon's victory yesterday you realize they're now underdogs. It took Bill Gates a lot of guts to relocate to his hometown from Albuquerque after MITS went down. He absolutely changed Seattle from a shabby Navy town with a couple big industrial outfits, like Weyerhauser. And because of the isolated market a lot of local outfits followed his lead. And so a town less than half Detroit's size spawned household name companies like Nordstrom's, REI, Safeco Insurance, Costco, Amazon, T-Mobile, Sonicare, Nintendo... What is Jones Soda but Towne Club, except it's for sale in every Target cross the country? Whenever you guys post about "brain drains" or "Why doesn't somebody do something cool HERE?" you gotta ask yourself "Why is Detroit so hostile to industry & innovation?" You almost forget we stole the auto industry from INDIANA. Or that William Boeing was FROM Detroit, Nobody remembers that Sam Raimi wanted to bring his first studio picture HERE until Detroit City Hall slapped Universal Pictures with a $25,000 bill supposedly for DPD overtime on CRIMEWAVE/XYZ Murders to which Universal wisely said "What the hell is this?" and pulled out at a cost of millions of dollars to the local economy. If the D didn't waste so much energy snatching defeat from the jaws of victory it would be a lot better off.

there are many people who move to Portland [[quasi-hippies) who have no intention on working, so they never really look for employment. He said that any reasonable person who wants a job in Portland can find one, especially if they are not overly selective. If you want to work, someone will hire you..

ah, great album;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirtee..._Urban_Bohemia

[douglasm]

There was something either on NPR or done by our local NPR outlet about the unemployment picture in Portland, which is higher. It appears that people are moving to NorthWest Oregon for the quality of life, then can't find jobs because the people who moved there before them for quality of life reasons took what jobs there were before the newbies got there. You CAN find work, but the selectivity point made by Flying J is valid. Working in a C-Store is not that rewarding.

Reminds me a bit of Colorado in the mid 70's. A college friend moved there in '71, I moved there in early '73. After we both were there, Mike expressed the wish that he could have been able to pull a gate down at the Kansas border after him to prevent more people from moving in. I said "NO!". The gate should have come down AFTER I moved there.

In any case, it's no where near as bad as the "Will the last one leaving Seattle please turn out the lights" era of the early 70's when Boeing was in BIG trouble.