County's jobless rate rises

By ED MERRIMAN

Baker City Herald

Layoffs at the Ash Grove Cement Co. plant in Durkee triggered a surge in Baker County’s unemployment rate to 10.7 in December, up from 9 percent in November.

Those figures are non-seasonally adjusted numbers, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate gap was smaller, rising from 9.4 percent for November to 9.8 percent in December.

Jason Yohannan, regional employment economist, said Baker County’s manufacturing sector reported an 80-job loss from November to December, which reflects in part Ash Grove’s “well publicized” temporary layoffs of 67 workers on Dec. 19.

“That is probably the largest single factor for the increase in unemployment in Baker County,” Yohannan said.

Terry Kerby, manager of Durkee plant, said the company plans to call back the workers some time in February, provided construction and cement demand increase enough to draw down inventories.

Ash Grove temporarily suspended cement production and laid off approximately 500 workers at nine plants nationwide starting in November, due to a 26 percent drop in cement consumption in 2009, on top of a 16 percent reduction in 2008.

In a company newsletter distributed this week, Charles Sunderland, Ash Grove’s chairman of the board, said the economic downturn of 2009 “is the most severe Ash Grove has experienced in our 127-year history.”

Nonetheless, Kerby said he is optimistic about the company’s future.

“Our company has operated for 127 years, and we have weathered a number of downturns,” he said. 

Now that the December jobless figures are in, Yohannan said the Employment Department has tabulated preliminary averages for all of 2009.

Baker County’s average for the year was 10.5 percent, lower than the Oregon average of 11.4 percent, but much higher than the county’s average of 7 percent for 2008.

“That is the first time in many years (since 1977) that Baker County’s average unemployment was lower than the state’s,” Yohannan said.

But he emphasized that that comparison doesn’t mean things were particularly rosy in Baker County.

“The downturn hit other parts of the state much more than Baker County, but it was still a crummy year,” Yohannan said.  

He said the annual averages factor in both seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted monthly rates.

In 2009 overall, Yohannan reported total employment in Baker County dropped by 260 jobs — 220 in the private sector and 40 in the government sector.

Baker County’s manufacturing and construction sectors both lost 40 jobs, with manufacturing employment falling from 600 in 2008 to 560 in 2009, and construction dropping from 270 to 230.

Leisure and hospitality employment dropped from 620 jobs to 590; and retail from 700 to 690.

Health services is the only non-farm sector of Baker County’s economy that bucked that trend, adding 10 jobs in 2009, Yohannan said.

“Health services has been the one recession proof industry in Baker County,” Yohannan said.

While Baker County’s economy took a step back in December, largely due to the Ash Grove layoffs, Yohannan said Oregon added 2,900 jobs during the month. It was just the second month of 2009 with an increase — July, with 500 jobs added, was the other.

Yohannan said December’s increase is a positive indicator that the state may indeed be recovering from the recession.

“The 2,900-job increase is better than anything Oregon has seen in the last year and a half,” Yohannan said. “It’s the first time in a long time we got some pretty good news.”

On the other hand, Yohannan said the national job outlook took a turn for the worst in December with a loss of 85,000 jobs.

That national job loss came on the heels of November’s addition of 4,000 jobs, a trend that prompted what Yohannan said now appear to be overly optimistic claims that the country had turned the corner nationally on the recession.

He pointed out that 2009 averages are preliminary and subject to revision over the next 30 days.