Regional Business News

A cluster of publicly traded companies that once promised a new era of Oregon innovation and a fountain of high-wage jobs has instead stagnated.

Each year, people who come to Yellowstone hoping to glimpse a wolf spend around $35 million in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, according to an intensive study of visitors by John Duffield and others.

"We wanted access to great talent, where our employees would have a nice work/life balance and have things they wanted to do like restaurants and art,"

With a series of SBIR grants but no other significant funding, Epley said Vesticon has completed development work on two devices and plans to begin sales in the fall. A third system is halfway through development.

Partly funded by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA, the study identifies areas of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and western Montana that could have less snow during the core winter months of December, January and February.

Among the statistics included in this survey: employment, payroll, value added by manufacture, cost of materials consumed, value of shipments, detailed capital expenditures, supplemental labor costs, fuels and electric energy used, and inventories by stage of fabrication.

If Weyerhaeuser cannot generate higher profit with a recent overhaul, it could be forced to choose between timber and manufacturing.

The Seattle venture capital firm will use the money to bankroll as many as a half-dozen new startup companies in the Pacific Northwest each year — a potential booster shot to the region’s high-tech economy.

Job candidates are getting multiple offers and salaries are rising.

Ever since the offshore shift of skilled work sparked widespread debate and a political firestorm three years ago, it has been portrayed as the killer of good-paying American jobs.