OREGONIAN EDITORIAL: A state of low-wage jobs

By Warren Jimenez

As the President of the Local Elected Officials on the Workforce Investment Board and the Higher Education Liaison for the City of Portland, Sam has been advocating for more state funding during this legislative session.

Unfortunately, the federal trends are worst. Since 2003, federal allocations for our region have gone from $25 million to an anticipated $15 million for 2007.

Worksystems Inc. recently received word from the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development that the primary federal resources available to provide workforce development services in our region will be cut by nearly 27% or just over $2.7 million for services beginning July 1, 2007. These cuts mean about 800 adults and 300 youth will not receive training or related services.

A state of low-wage jobs
Wednesday, May 02, 2007

O f all the questions raised by the Progress Board's report on the Oregon economy, here's the most important:

Do you want fries with that?

That is the vital question in a state that is becoming the world's best place to find a low-wage job. The Progress Board's new Benchmark Report to the People of Oregon, released Monday, paints a discouraging picture of a state led by a Legislature that still hasn't made the connection between quality education and skills training, and good jobs.

Instead, the report is full of statistics that painfully illustrate the results of Oregon's decades-long disinvestment in education and training. Among them:

Per-capita personal income in Oregon is only 93 percent of the U.S. rate, has steadily declined since 1996 and is now at its lowest level in nearly 20 years.

Only one Oregon worker in three makes at or above 150 percent of the poverty rate for a family of four.

Oregon's concentration of professional services, such as lawyers and accountants, is falling. Less than 40 percent of Oregon workers received at least 20 hours of training in 2005 -- far from the distant goal of 75 percent.

In the dry language of the Progress Board report, "Adult education attainment and skill development indicators, key to building a quality work force, are off track." Yes, they are.

If you wonder why, you could look back over the past 20 years and see the choices that Oregon has made: Measures 5, 47 and 50, property-tax limits that foisted K-12 school funding onto the state; the Measure 11 decision to invest in prisons, not education; voters' stubborn insistence on funding public services with a single volatile source, the income tax.

But really, you need look no further than the budget debate now under way in Salem. It's all there: The lip service lawmakers are paying to universities, the utter disregard of community colleges, the fight it is taking just to get lawmakers to invest a measly $10 million in work force training.

That's not how you build a strong work force. That's not how you get companies to bring family-wage jobs here, or persuade them to keep them here.

No, that's how you get an economy where new jobs pay less than the old ones they are replacing. That's how you wind up with a huge population of working poor, who live without health insurance and spend a huge portion of their income on housing. That's how you wind up with Oregon's economy.

Look at the neighbors: The Washington Legislature just agreed to invest several billion more dollars in education. The Oregon Legislature, meanwhile, is trying to summon the nerve to require some of the state's largest corporations to pay more than the $10 a year they now pay in corporate income taxes.

Ten bucks. It all leads back to that essential question in the new Oregon economy:

You want fries?

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Posted Wed, 05/02/2007 - 9:48am.

Nice spin

Submitted by mmmarvel on Wed, 05/02/2007 - 9:47pm.

As usual, a government agency worker simply cries that more money, more money, THAT will solve the problem. What a narrow view of the problem. The problem isn't that there isn't enough money in education, it's that it isn't spent well. It isn't that there isn't enough opportunity for people to get schooling at community colleges, it's that many of them don't want to bother with it. Far too many don't want the extra effort and bother to go to school after work, have to deal with homework and the cost (which is actually fairly reasonable). Far too many feel that they are tired, they would rather sit and watch the tube, have a beer and go to bed to start again tomorrow.

Our problem isn't really an unskilled labor force, it's a state that is unfriendly (especially the Portland area) so that industry moves out of the state rather than into the state. The companies that do move in bring in the low paying jobs (Google and Netflix). It really doesn't matter how well educated and/or skilled your workforce is if the state is going to make it difficult to exist. Yes, the corporate minimum tax is low but that is about all that's low. Our infra-structure is dismal because money that should be spent on the roads is spent on trams and toy trains. What good is it to make a widget if you can't ship it anywhere in a timely manner. If the startup costs have so many regulations (environmental and otherwise) that it will take you 3 to 5 years to show a profit.

Look at the whole picture; the problem is not lack of funds, it's how the funds are spent. Schools should be teaching what is needed in the workplace but they are not. They are not in the high schools so the community colleges have become remedial high school. That slows down (and takes part of the budget) what the community colleges could and should be doing.

Bottom line, as long as we are unfriendly to business, business won't come here. As long as business doesn't come, wages remain low and opportunities are limited.

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Crazy idea - Have you ever

Submitted by Steve on Thu, 05/03/2007 - 7:35am.

Crazy idea - Have you ever asked employers why they don't want to bring businesses to Oregon? This seems an open-loop approach to keep building things, raaising taxes and spending money without any idea if it addresses real issues. I am serious, I have ideas, but they are just theories and your reasons may be better. You have to realize the perspective as a public employee is diff from that of the private sector.

I agree about education, but even if we get more money like the 20% revenue upside, Teddy K said it would go to benefits and not to reducing student-teacher ratios.

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