One of the few economic news for Oregon in the past few years shows how far the state has to go to recover from the Great Recession, economists say.
p
Intel Corp., the state’s largest private employer, said Tuesday it would invest $6 billion to $8 billion in a plan whose centerpiece is a new factory employing up to 1,000 people in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro. The same morning, the state government released figures showing unemployment stuck where it has been for a year and nearly 200,000 Oregonians looking for work.
p
Boy, it’s clearly — in what is a pretty gray environment — a break in the clouds, said John Tapogna, president of the economic consulting firm ECONorthwest.
p
In addition to the permanent production jobs, Intel said the plan would also bring 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs to build the Hillsboro fab, as chip factories are called, and upgrade four existing plants: Two in Arizona, two in Hillsboro.
p
They’re exactly the kind of jobs we’re looking to attract, said University of Oregon economist Tim Duy, who is the keeper of an Oregon economic index that lately has been throwing off signals of weakness in the modest expansion that followed the recession.
p
He calculates, though, that an Intel-size announcement once a month for the next 10 years would still leave Oregon shy of replenishing the jobs it lost in the recession.
p
While the statewide unemployment rate has retreated from its highs last year, it remained at 10.6 percent in September, well above the national average and about where it has been for 11 months, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Department of Employment.
p
Still, economists saw promise in Intel’s announcement, including long-term benefits such as further entrenching Intel’s operations in Oregon, where it employs 15,000 with an annual payroll of $1.8 billion, and restoring some…