Economic Dashboard

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.

The Northwest Federation of Community Organizations recently released their 2005 Northwest Job Gap study. According to this study, Oregon has not created enough living wage jobs for those who are seeking employment.

What is a living wage? According to this study, it is based on what amount of money is needed to meet a person's basic needs and provide them with the ability to deal with emergencies and plan ahead.

So, what is the bottom line? In Oregon, a single person needs to make $10.77 per hour and a single person with two children needs to make $22.37 per hour. Unfortunately, 38% of job openings pay less than this hourly rate for a single person while 85% of job openings pay less than the $22.37 rate for a single person with two children. As a result, individuals and families are forced to make difficult choices between healthcare, nutrition and keeping up with paying the bills.

Individual and family properity is getting more difficult for Portlanders.  This is why I continue to work the most common, lowest paying jobs in Portland. I want to continue to shine the spotlight on this issue.

The Portland tram is over budget. 

I’m on my 11th of 15 hours on a Qantas flight from Los Angles to Melbourne, Australia. 

I think its 2:36 am Portland time.  Every seat on this 747-400 is sold out. 

Mine, a window seat, 53C, is almost being shared by a Grey-haired and good-natured Australian woman in front of me.  She told me she is, “like a goose,” she follows the summer weather between Los Angles and Melbourne.

Asleep now, she has her seat inclined so far back I am balancing this laptop halfway up my chest typing these words almost like what I imagine it feels like to play an accordion. 

Earlier in the flight, she was singing the praises of Melbourne (I’ll compare her praises to my reality of it once I arrive). 

Earlier, I asked her if she has an image of Portland and of Oregon. 

She said, “Oh, I know of Oregon from the movies; I know it is flat with lots of sage brush, not many hills, lots of horses, huh?” 

Gulp, I realize she has a cowboy movie impression of Oregon. 

“Any impression of Portland?”

“Not really,” she says.

Although cramped, I always look forward to a long flight and the opportunity to read.  On this flight I just finished “The World is Flat,” by Pulitzer Prize winning, New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman argues that the world economy is being leveled (thus the use of his term “flat”) in that individuals and companies around the world now have unparalleled challenges and opportunities to compete for jobs and customers.

Earlier I “Googled” for the reviews of this book:

• “There is no systematic connection between globalization and the free market…Globalization makes the world smaller. It may also make it—or sections of it—richer. It does not make it more peaceful, or more liberal. Least of all does it make it flat,” writes John Gray in the New York Review of Books.

• Friedman doesn't appear to spend much time outside of golf courses, five-star restaurants, limousines and luxury hotels… The voices of farmers, factory workers and street vendors are heard nowhere in the text…This book's lighthearted style might be amusing were it not for the fact that his subject -- the global economy -- is a matter of life and death for millions…” writes Roberto J. Gonzalez in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• “Nominally a liberal, he has trod a fairly middle path, supporting globalization and laissez-faire capitalism…Roughly 85 percent of "The World Is Flat" is boundlessly optimistic, but 15 percent of warning and possible doom nags at the reader for its potential to overwhelm the rest,” writes David Loftus in the Oregonian.

Of course, I read it looking for insight into how I can help make our Portland, Vancouver region more competitive in the cutthroat global economy.

This book reinforced a couple of my earlier notions of what we need to be doing locally:

• Compared to other regions around the world, we are hayseeds when it comes to paying attention to basic economic diagnostics, much less setting economic goals and working together – business, education and government – get achieve the goals. 

When India went from a closed centrally planned economy to a market based economy, they built string public private partnership (as in collaboration not central control) that set market-propelled goals and a way to track progress or not. 

Us? 

With the exception of our work around industry clusters, we have rudimentary economic “to do” lists we call economic strategies and few actual, accountable economic goals. 

It’s like if we set for sail from Portland to Honolulu with a map that says, “Find Hawaii, and make sure to bring a boat without holes in it; bring food; keep the wind is at your back unless it is blowing the wrong way.”

• Promote local “insourcing”: Build on our standing as a good rail, truck, marine and air port city.  Friedman writes that Louisville, Kentucky has worked with United Parcel Service to locate sixty companies around the UPS hub that perform subcontracting work for UPS to its clients. 

For example, Hewlett Packard contracts through UPS that in turn subcontracts with local Louisville companies to fix HP laptops.  HP actually never handles their own laptops in need of fixing.

We build a lot of component-only products; building on the fact we have one of their biggest import docks here, earlier this year, I tried in vain to get the PDC to make a pitch for bringing a the Toyota Hybrid assembly plant to Portland.

• We need to constantly upgrade the skills of all our workers.  The workers in the cities who know how to learn and adapt the best will be the winners in the global economy.

On that last issue, Friedman’s book also gives me additional dimensions to think about when doing business/job recruitment and retention work.  He discusses how different types of jobs are more or less vulnerable to overseas outsourcing.

He states that there are four broad categories of workers:

• The “special”:

Workers who are special are like Michael Jordan and Bill Gates.  “They have a global market for their goods and can command global-sized pay packages.”

• The “specialized”:

“If you cannot be special – only a few people can – you want to specialized, so that your work cannot be outsourced.  This applies to all sorts of knowledge workers – from specialized lawyers, accountants and brain surgeons, to cutting edge computer architects and engineers to advanced machine tool and robot operators.”

Friedman writes that these skills “are always in high demand and are not ‘fungible’…work that cannot be easily digitized and transferred to lower-wage locations.”

• The “anchored”:

“…everyone from the barber, to the waitress, to the plumber…their jobs must be done at a specific location…they are not fungible…”

• And the workers who are “really adaptable”:

Friedman states, “You want to constantly acquire news skills, knowledge and expertise that enable you to constantly to able to create value…knowing how to ‘learn to learn' will be one of the most important assets any work can have, because job churn will come faster, because innovation will happen faster.”

The airplane cabin lights are coming on for breakfast so I’ll sign off for now.  Next blog entry will be from Melbourne, Australia.

Article for the Rocky Mountain News, September 17, 2005

PORTLAND, Ore. - This is a famously livable city, and its residents tend to be famously smug about the fact. Some of them recognize, though, that the city faces serious economic challenges.  I'm in Portland this weekend, attending the annual convention of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, and our first panel Thursday focused on those challenges, as well as the reasons that the city's political culture is not well-equipped to meet them.  The panelists were Ethan Stelzer, director of the School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, Tim Hibbitts, who runs an independent polling firm, and Sam Adams, who joined the city council in January. All three are obviously devoted to the city, and if I leave out all the good things they said about it, which I will, that's only because the good side of the story is well known and often told.

Thank you so much for taking our on-line survey. If you haven't taken the survey, it's not too late. We look forward to collecting more surveys but we thought we would share early results. Please click here to see them.

We need your help. Help us define which economic goals are important to you through our on-line survey.

Over the past few months, we've been working with economists to help us develop the Portland Area Economic Dashboard. It sets draft goals for business success and individual and family prosperity. Now, it is your turn to tell us which goals are most important to you. Tell us what you think.

Portland Tribune - June 17, 2005

Commissioner Sam Adams this week unveiled a project he calls his “economic dashboard” — a framework that he’s spent the past five months crafting with the help of local economists, business leaders and other stakeholders.

Adams says the project is still in its early formation; it reflects input from the 100 businesses he visited during his first months in office, as well as from local labor groups, the Portland Business Alliance, local chambers of commerce, and representatives from Metro and Multnomah County.

The project poses the question: “How should we define economic success for Portland and the region?”

It uses business confidence, competitiveness, sustainability, innovation and other factors to gauge success for local businesses. And it uses family income, employment, health care, neighborhood livability and other factors to index success in individual and family prosperity.

Adams and his staff plan to seek further input from businesses and residents through the summer and will present a formal resolution this fall.

Press Release about the Economic Dashboard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   

Contact:  Warren Jimenez
June 13, 2005     503-823-4541

WHAT IS ECONOMIC SUCCESS?

Commissioner Adams and Local Economists Launch Community Discussions to Get “Broad Agreement” on Goals for Business Success and Family Prosperity

(Portland, OR)  How should we define economic success for Portland and the region?  This is the central question posed to business, labor and government as part of the “Portland Area Economic Dashboard” project facilitated by Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams and local economists this summer. 

“Hard to believe, we have never set actual goals for business success or individual and family prosperity,” Commissioner Sam Adams stated.  “Instead, business, labor and government muddle along with often disjointed economic development efforts, sometimes holding hands, sometimes taking swings at each other, but never working off the same set of agreed upon, specific and accountable goals.  Well, that’s no longer good enough.”

A group of the State’s leading economists along with representatives from the Portland Business Alliance and Portland Jobs for Justice will launch the discussion and outline the draft project goals.  The final draft of goals will be presented to business, labor and governments for their consideration and adoption in the fall of this year.

Adams said he initiated the “Portland Area Economic Dashboard” project in response to what he learned during his visit to over 100 businesses in the first 100 business days of his term. 

“It’s clear to me from my business visits that no one agrees on what our economic development goals are because they don’t exist,” Adams said.  “Our economic development plans are glorified “to do’ lists, but lack actual outcome goals.  My hope is the Economic Dashboard will help change the nature of our economic conversations from ‘who’s to blame’ to ‘what needs to be done’ to address economic issues.”

The “Economic Dashboard” project will gather information through discussions with the community that will create a set of economic goals for the measurement of Portland’s economic progress.  The “Economic Dashboard” becomes a strategic tool to guide local and regional efforts.  Once the goals are in place, quarterly performance reports will be generated by independent Dashboard economists to guide policy and investment.

“This effort fills a gap. It will be meaningful in our regional work to align people towards actions and continue towards a goal,” said Duke Shepard of the Portland Business Alliance. “I’m interested in how we can make this a regional business tool, and how this will help plot interactions between regional governments and businesses, too. This is especially important in our business efforts to be globally competitive.”

As facilitator, Adams and his staff, along with the Dashboard economists, will lead discussions with a variety of groups and organizations, including private citizens. They will use a set of draft business success goals as well as individual and family prosperity goals to seek agreement on indicators to define and to measure Portland’s economic progress.

The draft lead goals are currently under consideration:

Business Success Lead Goal:  Local business confidence survey matches national business confidence survey rating currently at 62.

Individual and Family Prosperity Lead Goal:  Local median family income of $67,900 matches median family income of $75,100 for western U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

Margaret Butler, advocate, Jobs for Justice said, “I am especially interested and excited that individual and family incomes are being considered by Commissioner Adams’ proposal. As this unfolds and we see our city’s conditions, we can especially note the situation in the health care industry. Additionally, I am very interested how other groups respond to this.” 

The completion of the Economic Dashboard and the quarterly reports from independent economists can serve to inform City Council plus other local governments as decisions, projects and policies are considered.  Regional businesses can use this factual information, rather than conjecture and perception, to make location and expansion decisions.

Adams said the Economic Dashboard project is a complementary effort to the City of Portland’s strategic visioning process begin in this Fall 2005, Mayor Tom Potter’s Economic Development Summit which will be held on June 24, 2005 at Kaiser Town Hall, and the Regional Business Plan facilitated by the Portland Business Alliance.

A summary of all the draft goals, along with an on-line survey and a schedule of community discussion meetings is available on Commissioner Sam Adams’ website:  www.commissionersam.com.

Commissioner Adams would like task how we should define economic success for Portland and the region? This is a draft list of indicators of a successful regional economy that our office and a team of advisors compiled. We want to know, what goals matter most to you?

BUSINESS SUCCESS GOALS

• LEAD GOAL: Business climate.
  Local business confidence survey  meets or exceeds national business confidence survey rating.   
• GOAL: Business viability.
  Local business profitability meets or exceeds national average.   
• GOAL: Business competitiveness.
  Job Creation, measured by rate of local business growth exceeds national average - and/or Percentage of local jobs added per 1,000 population exceeds national average.   
• GOAL:  Economic equality.
  Minority and women business ownership matches percent of minority and women in local population.   
• GOAL: Economic sustainability.
  Percentage growth rate in the number of local sustainable business exceeds national growth rate, and/or Maintain lead in LEEDS certified projects. 
• GOAL: Business innovation climate.
  Maintain 10 percent lead in Bachelor’s Degrees and higher held by 25+ year olds and/or Increase from 33rd to 10th Portland--Vancouver, OR--WA PMSA’s ranking for the total number of degrees conferred (Bachelor's and Higher) and/or  Increase from 15th 10th Portland--Vancouver, OR--WA PMSA’s ranking for the number of utility patents issued to companies or individuals per 1,000 workers.   
• GOAL: Other.

INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY PROSPERITY GOALS

• GOAL: Family income.
  Local median family income of $63,300 matches median family income of $70,000 for western U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas. (U.S. Census Bureau, updated 2005 ACS)
• GOAL:  Reduced Unemployment.
  Unemployment for all residents matches for western U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
• GOAL:  Health Care Coverage.
  100 percent health care coverage (Multnomah County Health Dept).
• GOAL: Educational Achievement.
  8th grade test scores, and/or high school completion (Oregon Dept of Education).
• GOAL:  Neighborhood Livability.
  Percentage of local residents rate their neighborhood livability as “good” or “Very Good”.
• GOAL: Other.