STATE WORKERS

Poor economies mean relatively more public employees

Hannah Hoffman
Statesman Journal

Here is one of the strangest thoughts I've had about public employees in a long time: When an economy falls apart, they are the ones left standing.

I thought about this as I explored a map The Washington Post created showing each county in the United States and when each county's median income peaked during the past 45 years, adjusted for inflation.

It's fascinating stuff, but pieces of it can break your heart.

In Oregon, there are six counties — Curry, Coos, Lane, Klamath, Gilliam and Wheeler — where the median income peaked in 1969.

Imagine that. The middle income in those counties has been buying less and less since my 89-year-old grandfather was 44 and raising a family in Curry County. They have been dropping for the entirety of my parents' working lives and appear to be dropping for the entirety of mine.

The rest of the state really doesn't look a lot better. Incomes peaked 15 years ago in most counties and 35 years ago in many. Only two (Sherman and Hood River) saw their peak in the last five years or less.

Now layer on top of that Washington Post research, the research out of the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

Analyst Josh Lehner sent me a couple of charts that show what he's been working on, mostly regarding employment data. It shows how long ago each Oregon county reached its current employment levels, and it's not a lot prettier.

Employment hasn't grown in Coos, Lake, Harney, Grant or Wheeler counties since the 1970s.

It hasn't grown in Benton, Curry, Douglas, Klamath, Gilliam, Jefferson, Crook, Baker or Malheur counties since the Clinton administration.

The rest show trends you might expect. Many have reached the same employment levels they were at in the years before the 2008 recession, and several have reached new employment highs in the last couple of years.

Between the two pieces of research, you have a picture of a state where income has dropped or stagnated for decades and employment hasn't grown since the 1990s.

It doesn't look too bad, actually, if you're in Multnomah or Washington counties, for example. It's not even particularly terrible if you live here in Marion County. The places where it's worst are rural Oregon, a fact that probably doesn't surprise anyone.

Lehner also provided a chart showing where public employees fit into this picture. His scatter plot, as he calls it, shows the percentage of public employees in each county in 2013.

Here's what it shows: In these counties where wages and employment aren't growing, there are proportionally more public employees in the workforce.

It's very pronounced in those five counties where employment has stagnated since the 1970s. In Harney County, public employees are 46 percent of the workforce, the highest in the state.

It's also higher in that group where the median income has fallen since 1969.

Conversely, the percentage of public employees is relatively low in Washington, Hood River, Multnomah counties, the same ones where the economy is healthy and moving right along.

This does not mean there are no public employees in Washington County, for example. By contrast, it has one of the largest school districts in the state, a large county government and several sizable city governments, as well as plenty of state offices.

There are a lot of public-sector workers in Washington County, but they make up about 7 percent of the workforce.

Why? Because Washington County has a private sector, a real one, one that employs a lot of people.

It has Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and Reser's Fine Foods.

Some of these other counties do not truly have a "private sector." They may have some farmers or ranchers, some small businesses, doctors and small-town lawyers and a local mechanic, but they do not have an economic engine that drives itself.

This is the truth it shows about public employees: They're still there. No matter how badly their economies are doing, communities still need police officers, teachers, district attorneys, tax clerks and children's welfare case workers.

In fact, a poor economy sometimes comes with more need for public sector employees. Crime often goes up in those communities, and often domestic violence does too. The need for an education increases, as there are fewer opportunities for people who don't make it through high school or college.

Some of these counties with low incomes and stagnate employment have started to cut back on their public sector as well, especially police officers, as taxes will no longer cover all those services.

It remains to be seen what would happen if we ever saw a local economy where the public sector was cut to the same degree private industry has been, and hopefully things never get bad enough in rural Oregon that we will see it.

hhoffman@statesmanjournal.com, (503) 399-6719 or follow at twitter.com/HannahKHoffman