I just updated my economic forecast, taking into account the new GDP data released by the government last week. Fourth quarter growth came in stronger than I had expected–and everyone has been telling me I’m an optimist!
Here’s how the new forecast looks:
Print This Post
Email This Post
Employers Share Top Staffing Challenges
Offering more flexible work arrangements - 28%
Investing more in training - 21%
Promising future benefits (raises when the economy picks up) - 18%
Offering more performance-based incentives (trips, bonuses) - 16%
Providing higher salary without the title - 11%
Providing both higher title and salary - 10%
Providing higher title without the salary - 7%
We haven’t been able to hold on to top talent - 6%
CareerBuilder Survey: - While hopeful economic news has some companies breathing a cautious sigh of relief when it comes to headcount, others continue to face staffing challenges. According to a new CareerBuilder survey, being able to provide competitive compensation (34 percent), maintaining productivity levels (33 percent) and being able to retain top talent (31 percent) are organizations’ top staffing concerns this year. The survey was conducted between November 5 and November 23, 2009, among more than 2,700 employers.
Print This Post
Email This Post
By Tim Duy,
Oregon Economic Forum
University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators.
sponsor, KeyBank.
The University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators™ rose 1.2 percent in December to 86.8 (1997=100) from a revised November figure of 85.8. Since reaching a low in July 2009, the UO Index has risen for five consecutive months as the Oregon economy pulled out of recession. The UO index was revised to account for an annual update of seasonal adjustment and standardization factors; the revisions resulted in only minor quantitative changes.
Highlights of the report include:
• Labor markets showed welcome signs of improvement. Initial unemployment claims continue to edge down, signaling a slow but steady reduction in the pace of layoffs, while employment services payrolls – largely temporary employment firms – extended the previous month’s modest improvement, rising to the highest level since last July. This is a sign that some firms need to bolster their workforce in the face of firming economic activity. Note that overall nonfarm payrolls posted a 2,900 gain on employment increases in manufacturing, education and health services, and the trade, transportation, and utilities sectors.
Print This Post
Email This Post
Federal Government to Crack Down on Misclassified “Independent Contractors?”
by Dennis Westlind
Stoel Rives LLP, Attorneys at Law
It’s always risky to misclassify someone who should be an employee as an “independent contractor,” but President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal will increase the risks for employers. According to this budget summary from the U.S. Department of Labor, the misclassification of employees as contractors is estimated to cost the Treasury Department over $7 billion in lost payroll tax revenue over the next ten years. To help make up for this shortfall, the proposed budget includes funds earmarked for a “joint proposal” between the DOL and the Treasury Department to eliminate legal incentives for such misclassification, and an additional $25 million to target misclassification with 100 additional enforcement personnel and competitive grants to boost states’ incentives and capacity to address this issue.
Print This Post
Email This Post
By: J.L. Wilson
Associated Oregon Industries,
February 2010 Talking Points on Education and Fiscal Policy
1. Senator Diane Rosenbaum (D-Portland) is introducing legislation – SB 1045 – that would prohibit employers from using credit reports to make employment decisions. Over half of Oregon employers use these types of reports in hiring key personnel, usually in positions of “trust” (handling company assets, customer assets, or sensitive information). The AOI Board of Directors voted to oppose this legislation as introduced, but AOI will work with the sponsor and others to explore opportunities to make the legislation workable for employers.
Print This Post
Email This Post
Markets Don’t Stay Bad Forever: Cycles, Trends, and an Oil Refining Example
By Bill Conerly,
Conerly Consulting, Businomics,
Valero Energy Corp. is selling oil refineries that it had bought a few years ago. We used to have a shortage of domestic refining capacity, but now we have an excess—even though there has not been a new refinery built in the United States in years. Capacity at existing refineries was expanded through new technology, our demand for refined products lagged, and imports of refined products have increased, thanks to expanded capacity overseas. (It used to be that only crude oil was shipped in, but now gasoline and diesel are imported in tankers.)
Who would buy those refineries from Valero? One very sharp businessman named Thomas O’Malley, the same guy who sold the refineries to Valero back in 2005. He’ll likely pick up his old properties at a steep discount to the price he received for them near the peak of the market. The Wall Street Journal quotes O’Malley: “Markets don’t stay bad forever.”
Print This Post
Email This Post
Excerpts from Senate Democrat February 2010 Agenda
Getting Oregonians Back to Work
Last session, through our investments in transportation, infrastructure, health care, and affordable housing we created and maintained thousands of family-wage jobs in all 36 counties. In the February session, we will continue to prioritize preserving existing jobs, creating new jobs, and giving unemployed Oregonians new opportunities to return to the workforce. Senate Democrats will do this by:
• Supporting unemployed Oregonians by providing emergency benefits for an estimated 18,600 workers so they can feed their families while continuing to look for work
• Providing oversight and accountability over the 2009 session jobs packages to make sure our investments are putting Oregonians back to work
Print This Post
Email This Post
Strategy for Measure 67 Taxes – Do you operate your business as a C corporation?
By Patrick J. Green and John A. DiLorenzo, Jr.
Davis, Wright and Tremaine LLP
With the Jan. 26, 2010, passage of Measure 67 in Oregon, taxes on corporations with sales in the state will increase retroactively to 2009. C corporations will pay a higher minimum tax and higher corporate income tax on income in excess of $250,000. Other business entities will pay an increased minimum tax regardless of profits.
This advisory provides a brief analysis of Measure 67’s implications and describes a strategy for tax reduction for businesses operating as C corporations.
New corporate minimum tax
C corporations filing Oregon income tax returns on Oregon source income were targeted for tax increases under Measure 67. Before passage of Measure 67, businesses operating as C corporations paid a minimum annual tax of $10 and a 6.6 percent income tax on profits. Measure 67 has increased the minimum annual tax to $150 regardless of profits.
Print This Post
Email This Post
The Vancouver newspaper — The Columbian Editorial
Oregon voters deliver two more reasons for businesses to move to Clark County
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Whatever government revenue might be generated by the passage of Measures 66 and 67 in Oregon on Tuesday, make no mistake that one result is simple and straightforward. It has allowed those who make decisions with taxpayer dollars to skate. Rather then solving the problem of paying too much out to everything — including salaries and benefits to Oregon state workers — legislators simply asked for, and received, more.
We hope Washington state is not next, but we suspect that all states — including ours — are in the reaching-deeper-into-our-pockets mood instead of getting their expenses under control.
In the meantime, we put out the welcome mat here in Clark County for Oregonians who want some relief. Our community has always been a great place to do business; as of Tuesday, it just got better. More than any immediate or statistical impact (we noticed no long line of northbound trucks moving companies here Wednesday morning), the benefits to Southwest Washington will evolve slowly and will be related to overall business climate. Even several days before the vote, a Saturday story by The Columbian’s Libby Tucker included this quote from Bart Phillips, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council in Vancouver: “(Tuesday’s election has) already had its impact whether or not it passes, just because the specter of it causes instability. It shows the legislature is willing to increase corporate taxes …”
Print This Post
Email This Post
By the Internal Revenue Service,
If you are donating to charities providing earthquake relief in Haiti, you may be able to claim those donations on your 2009 tax return. Here are 10 important facts the Internal Revenue Service wants you to know about this special provision.
1. A new law allows you to claim donations for Haitian relief on your 2009 tax return, which you will be filing this year.
2. The contributions must be made specifically for the relief of victims in areas affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.
3. To be eligible for a deduction on the 2009 tax return, donations must be made after Jan. 11, 2010 and before March 1, 2010.
Print This Post
Email This Post
By Patrick Emerson
Oregon Economics Blog
Gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury has come out with a proposal to create a “Bank of Oregon” where all state agencies would be required to deposit their funds. Then the bank would be required to invest only in in-state projects. It is an interesting idea, modeled on a similar bank in North Dakota that has been aroundn for 90 years.
The populism of the idea is clear, ‘boo, big multinational corporate banks!,’ but is it a good idea?
Well, it is hard to say. It seems to rest on the premise that worthy in-state ventures cannot get access to capital. This is not hard to believe is true to some extent at the moment, but putting aside a once-in-a-lifetime credit market collapse, is this an accurate premise in general? I am not convinced.
Print This Post
Email This Post
Flash Cookie changes how marketers can track users online
By Oregon Small Business Association,
Marketers have a fresh, new tracking tool to follow you online and it’s tougher to beat. In the past, the best way to preserve online anonymity is to delete your cookies, the bits of computer code embedded in Web browsers that remember the sites you visit and is a pinpoint marketing tool for business. Each action you take online draws a sharper and more useful profile of you. In the past, this crumb trail is erased by simply going to a browser’s “Tools” menu and clicking “clear recent history” or “delete cookies”. Meet the “Flash cookie.” With “Flash cookie” this is no longer the case. It acts like a hard drive, storing data online and not on the browser, so it won’t be erased when consumers clear cookies.
The Federal Trade Commission isn’t amused. Chairman Jon Leibowitz is contemplating rules that would penalize companies that track consumers without consent or adequate transparency. His rationale: If people delete cookies, there’s a reason. Congress may also step in. Rep. Rick Boucher (D–Va.) is writing a bill requiring companies to notify users about online cookies and ad targeting.
Print This Post
Email This Post
NW Business Litigation Blog
Ater Wynne
Oregon Attorneys at Law
Washington’s domestic partnership law, which went into effect on December 3, 2009, provides that for all purposes, registered domestic partners must be treated the same as married spouses, unless doing so would conflict with state law. “Registered domestic partners” include same-sex domestic partners, and also opposite-sex domestic partners, provided one of them is at least 62 years old.
For employers, this means that employment-related benefits must be extended to the registered domestic partners of employees on the same basis as spouses — that is, unless the benefit is governed exclusively by federal law. FMLA is one such law; ERISA is another. This means that employers subject to FMLA and the corresponding state leave laws (the Washington Family Leave Act, state pregnancy disability laws, and state military leave laws) cannot count against an employee’s annual FMLA entitlement any leave that is covered by state law but not FMLA.
Print This Post
Email This Post
By Bill Conerly,
Conerly Consulting, Businomics,
Some say that we have added no jobs in the past 10 years, and they are calling it a “lost decade.” What they see is a product of bad data analysis. Here’s the actual U.S. employment data, plotted in blue:
Print This Post
Email This Post
State tax agency asks you to wait until after special election to file 2009 tax returns
Oregon Department of Revenue,
SALEM—If you’re in a hurry to file your tax return, the Oregon Department of Revenue asks you to hold on to it until after the January 26 special election. “If people file before the special election, we’ll hold their returns until we know the election results. But we’d rather everyone wait to file,” said Theresa Schuh, personal income tax policy manager. The agency doesn’t usually start processing tax returns until mid to late January, anyway, she said.
Even though tax return processing will start a few days later this year, most taxpayers who file electronically will get their refunds five to 10 days after their returns are processed. “If you e-file your tax return on February 1, you could have your refund by February 8,” she said.
Print This Post
Email This Post
By Aaron Crowley,
Oregon business owner and author of Less Chaos, More Cash
My good friend Scott called me the other day and he was shouting, “I shouldn’t have to explain this! It goes without saying!” You see, he recently started a small business, detailing luxury cars, and he had just received a nasty call from a customer who was less than pleased to find a French Fry on the floor of his Mercedes after spending $350 to have it cleaned. It was the first car, his very first employee, had ever cleaned. Scott, like so many small business owners, had made a very common assumption: He believed that washing and waxing expensive automobiles was a labor of intense love that is done with great care by everyone, most especially his new employee. Accordingly, he sent his very first employee off to his very first detail job with few instructions other than, “Make sure you get a check.”
He made what I like to call the Deadly Assumption(TM) – which is the belief that some work is so basic, fundamental, and obviously important that it need not be explained…which explained his shouting, “I shouldn’t have to explain this!”
Print This Post
Email This Post
DeFazio Introduces Transaction Tax
By Oregon Small Business Association,
Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio and others in Congress are pushing a new concept that would fund spending programs by taxing securities and derivative transactions. Supporters argue that H.R. 4191, Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009, which would implement a 0.25% transactions tax, will raise revenue without impacting the average investor. The concept is that the tax is needed to ensure that Wall Street pays for their share of the needed investments. Opposition states that the bill has many underlying problems and loopholes which would lead to an even worse economic decline.
Below are the pros and cons of the transaction tax
Print This Post
Email This Post
Copyright © 2010, OregonReport. All Rights Reserved. | Terms of Use - Copyright - Legal Policy | Contact Oregon Report
