Kevin Max, Kristy Hessman and Cathy Carroll
The Bulletin
Central Oregon's top 50 private employers added 749 jobs so
far this year over last year, according to an analysis of an
annual employment survey.
Although the number of jobs grew nearly 4 percent overall
among the top employers in the 2004 survey by Economic
Development for Central Oregon (EDCO), there was little change in
the businesses that made the list or in those that created jobs,
with a couple of notable exceptions.
Rankings among the top 20 employers — including St.
Charles, Bright Wood and Les Schwab — remained fairly
stable, moving only a notch up, down or maintaining their spots.
Other companies, however, had some stories behind their
employment rankings.
ASCENDANT IN THE RANKS
The single biggest job creator in the 2004 ranking was
T-Mobile, a wireless communications company that opened a new
call center in Redmond. T-Mobile, which didn't appear on last
year's list, entered the chart at 27th. The company has said it
will hire about 700 people to fully staff the new office.
Deschutes Brewery moved up eight notches to 40th with 36 more
jobs than the 2003 ranking, according to an analysis of EDCO
figures conducted by The Bulletin.
"We're still growing," said Deschutes Brewery President Gary
Fish. "We're still not quite through our substantial expansion
project."
The Bend-based brewer is on the brink of finishing an
additional 70 percent production capacity and a storage facility.
Fish said the jobs were added in production, sales and his
restaurant staff.
Although additional growth is incrementally tougher to
achieve, he added, the craft brewing industry is still young and
small.
"Craft brewers have about 3 percent of the national beer
sales, and we think it should be 10 percent," he said. "I think
the industry today is better, and the businesses are better
run."
Edge Wireless of Bend was not listed on EDCO's list of the 50
largest private employers last year. This year, it took 46th
place after the staff size surged by a third, to 122 according to
EDCO's survey.
Christa Summers, director of human resources for Edge
Wireless, said the company has hired 30 people in the last year,
bringing the staff to 123 today, up from 93 last year.
The company expects to hire another 30 workers, mostly for its
call center, as it did last year, she added.
"As subscriber growth continues to rise, we hire more customer
care representatives," she said. The company has more than
100,000 subscribers. Some new jobs were also created at the Bend
headquarters' accounting, human resources, marketing and
technology departments, she said.
"We promote from within and fill those positions," Summers
said. "We almost always have open positions in customer services
because of the growth."
The company has a total of 245 employees. Of those 170 are in
Oregon, and the rest are in southeastern Idaho, Northern
California and Wyoming.
Descending in rank
Alliance Data Systems (ADS), formerly ORCOM Solutions, dropped
from 43rd to 35th. The Dallas-based ADS company bought ORCOM
Solutions of Bend in December.
EDCO's list shows a 15 percent drop in staff to 130 from 153,
but ADS spokesman Tony Good said the company has about 115
workers now.
He said the company laid off about seven workers since the
buyout because of job redundancies and attrition.
Also Multnomah Publishers dropped off the 2004 list, after
being ranked 41 with 130 jobs in last year's list.
Some of the growth for the Sisters-based publisher of
Christian titles in the prior year was predicated on a New York
Times Best Seller that ran its course. With no strong replacement
titles, Multnomah was forced in February 2003 to call off its
multimillion-dollar expansion to a 35-acre campus and scale back
on employees.
Multnomah President Don Jacobson said the company now employs
88 people, a drop of 32 percent from 2003 employment numbers.
Central Oregon's largest private employer, St. Charles medical
centers in Bend and Redmond, retained the top rank but shed more
than 60 jobs, or 3 percent of their employees, over the last year
according to the EDCO report.
Todd Sprague, spokesman for parent company Cascade Health
Services, said the drop in the overall number of employees can be
attributed to a cutback of 100 positions in the spring of
2003.
Sprague said of those positions, about 40 were already vacant,
leading to an actual loss of about 60 people.
"In many areas (the cuts) had to do with changes in budgets,
declining reimbursement from state programs and trying to
continue to be as efficient as possible," Sprague said.
Sprague said that despite the overall numbers, various
positions at the hospital continue to fluctuate.
From 2001 to 2004, Sprague said the number of registered
nursing positions grew by more than 100, while the number of
transcriptionists and medical records clerks has declined because
the technology is moving in the direction of an electronic-based
records and radiology system.
"Even though there are fewer jobs, odds are a year from now we
will be back where we were," said Sprague. "In general, the
health care sector of the economy is growing."
