Job Growth May Be Slowing In Region Idaho’s Chief Economist Offers Observations

Though the country is still churning out jobs at a record pace, Idaho’s chief economist told an economic symposium here Friday that job growth may be slowing in our region.

“The trend is a slowing of employment growth overall for the region over the next few years,” said Mike Ferguson, chief economist for Idaho.

Ferguson’s remarks came at a daylong Inland Northwest Partners symposium.

Also at the meeting, Potlatch Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Pendelton Siegel explained why his company chose Spokane for its corporate headquarters.

Ferguson said Idaho is coming off peak employment growth of 5.6 percent in 1994 - the state’s best showing in 20 years - to a projected rate of 2.8 percent this year “and a little lower in ‘98.

In comparison, he said, “Washington has gone from being fairly weak in ‘94 and ‘95 to peak this year at about 4 percent.”

Idaho’s fastest-growing job sector has been high-tech industry, a category that grew from three-tenths of 1 percent of the gross state product in 1979 to almost 6 percent by 1994.

“This is probably the star performer for the region,” Ferguson said. “But in Idaho, it has been phenomenal.”

Washington, meanwhile, has seen similar growth in the business and professional services sector, which Ferguson believes is due to expansion of the software industry over the same 15-year period.

Resource industries have lost ground, but remain major contributors to gross state product, accounting for 16 percent in Idaho and about 8 percent in Washington.

Ferguson said utility deregulation will take away an economic development edge in the Northwest.

“As we go forward, this region, which has had a huge advantage on relatively low power rates, will lose some of that,” he said.

Idaho’s per capita income for this year is about 80 percent of the national average, while Washington’s has grown to 103 percent.

“But that per capita income is not occurring in rural Washington,” said Kate Heimbach, assistant director of administrative services for the state’s Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development in Olympia. “We have two very different economies - the central Puget Sound area that’s doing very well and other areas that aren’t doing as well. We need to share the prosperity.”

Tom Arnold, Idaho’s new director of the Department of Commerce, said Idaho also is looking to spread the wealth.

“I’m taking the focus off of Boise, quite frankly,” he said. “Boise is doing very well. We’re talking about doing the governor’s business opportunity conference in Coeur d’Alene next year.”

In his remarks, Siegel of Potlatch outlined why Spokane was chosen from among 15 U.S. cities for the relocation of company headquarters from Walnut Creek, Calif.

Along with the fact that several Potlatch officers have local family ties and area summer homes, Spokane offers good air connections and proximity to Potlatch’s Idaho operations in Lewiston, St. Maries and Pierce.

“When we narrowed it down, it came to a choice between Boise and Spokane,” Pendelton said, adding that sites in Post Falls were briefly considered. “We were indifferent, once we chose this market, whether we ended up on the Idaho or Washington side of the line. But the general consensus of our board was that we should be in the middle of a bigger city.”

, DataTimes