Survival requires work.
According to the last employment report from the State's regional economist, there are only 13-thousand of us working in the private sector in Clatsop county. Living in a timber rich county, there are only three hundred jobs in "wood product manufacturing" and 180 jobs in "mining and logging".
Where are the numbers?
Educational and health services are two thousand of these jobs. I would ask the state's economist to break out those educational jobs...are they really "private sector" jobs? Teachers aren't "private" in any sense that I can parse. They're union employees taking checks from the taxes private citizens pay.
Leisure and hospitality represents 37-hundred jobs. If you bus dishes or change sheets, this is your job.
Look at the economy the Democrats in Salem have created for you.
Survival requires work. In the next six months, at least one in twenty businesses in Clatsop county is going to close. In eighteen months, at least one in ten. Survival requires work. If you were living here in 1983 you remember what Broadway in Seaside or Commercial in Astoria looked like. Shuttered, empty storefronts.
As the market declines, as joblessness increases, businesses--the men and women who own businesses--are going to be making guesses as to how well they will continue to do in the near future. Not the short-term "year" or "two-year" short-term. The "next month" or "next three months" short-term. Making the critical decision; continue to go into the hole, or call it quits.
For most businesses in Clatsop county business has been down 20 percent since IV Quarter, 2008. For a lot of businesses, that decline has been forty percent or more. At a certain point, the way these businesses have chosen to operate must fundamentally alter their operations, or cease to exist.
This is the work that must be done in order to survive.
When you look at the "mom and pop" nature of many of our county's businesses, there are lessons to be learned from those who have weathered these business cycle downturns in previous downturns. Plumbers will let men go until they're down to bare bones. Electricians will let men go until they're down to bare bones. Locally owned retail stores will reduce inventory--thank God for UPS and Fedex--and let men and women go until they're operating with barebones staffs. But unlike previous downturns, the pain we've felt economically has yet to be matched with the pain that lies in our futures.
In economic downturns of the past, prices have always maintained their price levels until increases in demand take place. While prices tend to remain where they are (see the Ratchet Effect) companies are able to trade in their goods and services with fairly stable pricing. Certain sectors will experience greater volatility, notably commodities pricing will see price increases that take place before other sectors are able to increase their prices. In declining markets, fewer products and services are being produced. Increasing prices will assure an increase in supplies, but only to those firms willing and able to purchase them at higher prices.
In this economic downturn, the problems of declining markets--smaller returns on investment, reduced inventories and smaller employment pools--will be exacerbated by changes in government policies; higher taxes and fees, new workforce requirements, and the draconian shift to "green" energy supplies. If your business is paying $500 a month on electricity now, after Cap & Trade you'll be paying $1000.00 a month for the same amount of electricity. Where you come up with an additional Six Grand a month is your problem. You're government has a Vision!™
You might feel compelled to talk to your employees about the reasons why you're letting people go, reducing the size of your operation, or simply closing your doors. And until this session in Salem, this was not just a responsibility, but your right.
No longer.
The Democrats in Salem have outlawed your talking to your employees about the issues affecting your business. Unbelievable? Nothing is unbelievable about this crowd in Salem. They have a Leftist agenda, the numbers, and an incredible lack of work skills.
Senate Bill 519 prohibits employers from communicating with their employees on issues that affect their business, including the consequence of pending legislation that affects their jobs.
Some legislature, huh? (Homage to "Charlotte's Web.)
Survival requires work.
Start working today. When the tsunami of Vision!™ and Change!™ hits, we're all going to be swamped. Many of those who have the ability to withstand the tidal waves of financial disaster also have the ability to re-locate. As those with the wealth and ability to move their businesses do so, the declines in our state's economy will increase, joblessness will increase (until the unemployed vote with their feet) and revenue declines--both public and private--will increase.
I've already counseled my mom, who lives on a "fixed-income", to reduce her expenditures ten to fifteen percent. Her kids--me and my siblings--are all in the private sector, and we'll make sure we do what we can to make sure that she can stave off the wolves when she finds she's running short. But the four of us are already in survival mode. One sibling is on the brink of losing her enterprise and at her age and with her background isn't sure what or how to make choices for her future. And none of us are going to be getting a Stimulus check.
We will survive. I will survive. I've been through this before.
Survival requires work. Gotta go now. Back to work.
