Consultant offers keys to downtown revitalization
Flower pots and sidewalk seating help make downtown Vancouver an inviting place, said consultant Michele Reeves, but the area has a long way to go before it achieves her lofty goals. From 3:30 to 5 p.m. today, Reeves will lead a tour through downtown as she delivers her final recommendations after six months of study. The walk will start at the Spanky’s building, 812 Main St., and end with questions and conversation at Tommy O’s Pacific Rim Bistro, 801 Washington St.
Working in today’s world
Going to work isn’t what it used to be. Employers — facing dwindling revenues and tight profit margins — have been cutting costs across the board. There’s less money for travel, supplies and training. As thousands in Clark County have learned first hand, there’s also less money for health insurance and salaries.
Fair for men and women?
Trying to get a handle on how women are doing in the work force today can be confusing. Women are graduating college in higher numbers than men. In the Portland-Vancouver area, women in their 20s make more money than their male peers. And women did much better than men at holding on to their jobs through the recession — 8 percent of women are unemployed, compared with 9.8 percent of men.
Battling office bullies
The anguish strained his voice as he described the past five years. He used to love this job. Then the new boss came along. Each incident, on its own, would have been bearable — his office rearranged when he stepped out, the strange looks, rude comments, weird notes.
Startups struggle in our area
This recession has been great for entrepreneurs in most of the country, but not so good for folks starting new businesses in Clark County or the rest of the state. According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, a leading indicator of new-business creation, Americans created 558,000 new businesses each month in 2009 — an increase of 12.7 percent in just two years.
Clark County jobless rate climbs to 13.3%
Clark County's unemployment rate climbed to 13.3 percent in July as the county shed 1,800 jobs, according to a Tuesday report by the Washington Employment Security Department.
Web use at work puts job on line
For years our online lives have been encroaching on our jobs. Increasingly, the workplace is pushing back, intruding on the lives we live on the Web. The country’s biggest corporations have for years had guidelines about how staff should act online, said Joseph Vance, attorney at Miller Nash in Vancouver. Now small and mid-sized Clark County employers are getting in on the act.
Digging into who we are
What is Clark County’s economy all about? What does the business community look like here today? What’s it going to look like in the future? For all the data we have about employment, unemployment and the labor market, these questions are surprisingly difficult to answer. Yet we must have answers before we can address an even bigger question: What is the best, most effective way to nurture business and job growth in Clark County?
City bid plan could backfire
On the surface it sounds like such a good idea. Why wouldn’t the city of Vancouver embrace a new policy to give an edge to Vancouver-based businesses competing for government contracts? But some of the county’s largest contractors are worried about the ripple effects of an obscure ordinance revision that comes before Vancouver City Council on Monday.
Jobless safety net unravels
Fernel Del Valle was one of the first, but he’s far from the last. He’s one of 855 Clark County residents who have used up all the unemployment benefits available to them. Unless the U.S. Senate acts, another 6,000 local people will, one at a time, find their unemployment benefits running out soon.
Cleanups not limited to Gulf
As oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico — and BP promises to pay all legitimate claims for the damage it has caused — this is a good moment to look at business pollution in Clark County. Companies have left local port districts to spend at least $111 million cleaning up pollution, and taxpayers are footing most of that bill.
County may rise with yuan
China’s exchange rate may seem distant and abstract from Clark County. But news out of China this week could directly affect thousands of local jobs. Indirectly, it affects almost every American. More than 7,900 Clark County jobs and $3.1 billion in the local economy are directly tied to imports, exports and international trade. We don’t have data on how much of this trade is directly tied to China, but we do know that China is Washington’s biggest trading partner.
The Reflector purchased by Centralia publisher
Parent of Centralia's The Chronicle buys Battle Ground publishing company
Lending a bad hand
Much of Clark County’s foreclosure crisis can be traced to a small number of loosely regulated, nonbank lenders
Much of Clark County’s foreclosure crisis can be traced to a small number of loosely regulated, nonbank lenders
HP cutting 150 to 200 jobs
Layoffs, shift of work overseas call into question firm’s future in Vancouver
Hewlett-Packard Co. is in the process of laying off at least 150 Vancouver workers, and possibly more than 200, as it scraps its local Edgeline printer team and shrinks other engineering groups.
FDIC seizes Bank of Clark County
Business bank acquired by Umpqua Bank
The Bank of Clark County became the first locally based bank to fail in recent memory, following a ruling by state regulators on Friday that the Vancouver financial institution did not have adequate cash to stay in business. Its two branches will open Tuesday under the control of Umpqua Bank, which has assumed all of its roughly $209 million in insured deposits.
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