Page 8A
BUSINESS
East Oregonian
BRIEFLY
RDO employee
receives John
Deere degree
HERMISTON — Jamie
Newton, a service technician
at RDO Equipment Co. in
Hermiston, recently earned
the master service technician
degree from John Deere
University.
A web-based learning
portal for dealership
employees, the program
offers technicians the
opportunity to grow their
equipment knowledge and
advance their skills working
with agricultural machines.
It combines online courses
with instructor-led training.
Newton’s interest in the
degree began nearly six years
ago. He is looking forward
to using the skills and putting
the knowledge into practice
each day at his job.
Ryan Bensel, service
advisor, said the company
is proud to invest in the
continued learning and
development of team
members. Newton’s
degree, he said, will benefit
customers.
“Jamie is well-respected
by many of our customers
and, in achieving the master
service technician status, he
will continue to build strong
relationships with more of
them,” Bensel said. “He
strives to be the best at what
he does and I can’t wait to
see what the future holds for
him.”
Founded in 1968,
RDO Equipment Co. sells
and supports agriculture,
construction, environmental,
positioning, surveying,
and irrigation equipment
from leading manufacturers
including John Deere. It
has 78 locations across the
United States, including
Hermiston, Pendleton and
Pasco, and partnerships in
Africa, Australia, Mexico,
Russia, and Ukraine. For
more information, visit
www.rdoequipment.com.
H&R Block hosts
open house
HERMISTON — People
interested in learning more
about H&R Block’s Income
Tax Course are invited to an
open house .
There is no tuition for the
classes, which provide new
skills. In addition to learning
to prepare taxes, people can
earn additional money.
The open house event is
Tuesday, July 11 from 10
a.m. to noon and 6-8 p.m.
at Hermiston Plaza, 860
Highway 395, Hermiston.
For more information, call
509-579-9976.
To enroll in the Income
Tax Course in Hermiston,
visit www.hrblock.com/class
or call 800-472-5625.
Struggling Sears
closing more stores
NEW YORK (AP) —
Struggling department store
chain Sears says it’s closing
even more stores as it tries to
turn around its business.
Sears Holdings Corp.
CEO Eddie Lampert
said in a blog post Friday
that the company would
close another eight Sears
and 35 Kmart stores that
are unprofitable by early
October. Hundreds of store
closings have already been
announced this year.
Sears had said in March
that there was “substantial
doubt” it could continue after
years of bleeding money,
though it has insisted that
its actions to regroup should
help reduce that risk. With
more people shopping online,
mall foot traffic has dropped.
Lampert noted Friday that
Sears has opened smaller
stores to attract customers
and is on track to cut $1.25
billion in yearly costs.
There were 624 Kmart
stores and 651 Sears stores as
of the end of April.
Sears stock dipped 2.1
percent to $7.76 in afternoon
trading.
U.S. oil rig count
jumps to 952
HOUSTON (AP) — The
number of rigs exploring
for oil and natural gas in the
U.S. increased by 12 this
week to 952.
A year ago, just 440 rigs
were active.
Houston oilfield services
company Baker Hughes said
Friday that 763 rigs sought
oil and 189 explored for
natural gas this week.
Among major oil- and
gas-producing states,
Oklahoma and Alaska each
gained four rigs. Louisiana
and Texas were up two
apiece.
New Mexico and Utah
each declined by one.
Arkansas, California,
Colorado, Kansas, North
Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia and Wyoming
were all unchanged.
The U.S. rig count peaked
at 4,530 in 1981. It bottomed
out in May of 2016 at 404.
Mississippi’s largest
solar facility begins
generating power
SUMRALL, Miss. (AP)
— Mississippi’s largest solar
power installation is now
making electricity.
Mississippi Power Co. is
contracted to buy electricity
for 25 years from the $100
million Lamar County
facility, owned by D.E. Shaw
Renewable Investments.
Leaders of D.E. Shaw and
Mississippi Power, as well as
former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott,
gathered Friday to dedicate
the 600-acre facility, which
began sending electricity to
the grid last week.
The Sumrall facility
has about 220,000 solar
panels and can generate 52
megawatts of electricity,
enough power for 8,000
homes.
Mississippi Power is also
buying electricity from a
50 megawatt facility near
Hattiesburg, a 3 megawatt
Gulfport facility, and is
supporting a proposed
facility near Meridian.
Nuns against
pipeline build
chapel along route
COLUMBIA, Pa.
(AP) — A group opposing
a natural gas pipeline slated
to go through land owned
by some Pennsylvania nuns
has built a prayer chapel on
the proposed right of way.
Lancaster Against
Pipelines and the sisters,
The Adorers of the Blood of
Christ, plan to dedicate the
chapel at a prayer service on
Sunday.
Williams Partners is
the group building the
pipeline across 183 miles of
Pennsylvania. It has asked a
Lancaster County judge for
an emergency order to seize
the land. A ruling on that is
pending.
The company’s
spokesman says the
chapel is a “blatant
attempt to impede pipeline
construction.”
The nuns say in a press
release that they “revere
Earth as a sanctuary where
all life is protected” and
contend the pipeline
violates their commitment
to the environment.
BE A POWERFUL
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Saturday, July 8, 2017
Hiring surges in sign of U.S. economic vitality
WASHINGTON (AP)
— Hiring surged in June in
a surprising show of U.S.
economic vitality eight years
into the recovery from the
Great Recession. Pay gains
remain weak, though, a stark
reminder of one of the econ-
omy’s key shortcomings.
Employers
added
222,000 jobs last month, and
hiring in the previous two
months was revised much
higher. Job gains have now
averaged nearly 180,000 a
month this year, only slightly
below last year’s pace.
Unemployment ticked
up to 4.4 percent from 4.3
percent, but mostly for a
good reason: More Amer-
icans started looking for
work, a sign of confidence in
the economy.
Last month, economists
worried that hiring would
slow as employers struggled
to fill jobs from a dwindling
supply of unemployed
workers. Friday’s data
suggests companies are still
finding plenty of people to
hire.
That has given econo-
mists greater confidence the
economy still has room to
run.
“This balanced pace
should enable the current
economic expansion to be
maintained much beyond
the historical norm,” Russell
Price, senior economist for
Ameriprise Financial, said.
The current expansion is
AP Photo/Alan Diaz
In this May 22 photo, a “Now Hiring” sign welcomes
a customer entering a Best Buy store in Hialeah, Fla.
U.S. employers added a robust 222,000 jobs in June,
the most in four months.
the third-longest on record.
So far, the job market and
economy look broadly the
same as they did last year,
though President Donald
Trump has boasted that his
policies are accelerating
hiring and growth.
The economy’s durability
appears to be benefiting more
people. The unemployment
rate among blacks fell in
June to its lowest level in 17
years, at 7.1 percent. The gap
with whites, whose rate was
3.8 percent, persisted. The
rate among Latinos dropped
to 4.8 percent, the lowest in
11 years.
Even with June’s strong
hiring, average hourly pay
rose just 2.5 percent from a
year earlier. The last time the
unemployment rate was this
low, wages were rising by
roughly 4 percent. Normally,
as the number of unemployed
dwindles, employers raise
pay to attract job seekers.
Economists offer a
number of explanations for
why that dynamic hasn’t yet
kicked in.
One factor: The influx of
job seekers last month —
who had previously been on
the sidelines, not counted as
unemployed — might have
offset some upward wage
pressures. Employers had
more applicants to choose
from.
Mark Zandi, chief econ-
omist at Moody’s Analytics,
said many workers are
too cautious to push for
raises, partly because of the
lingering effects of the Great
Recession, when nearly 9
million people lost their jobs.
And some businesses
have decided they can’t
raise prices enough to afford
meaningful pay raises.
That cycle of limited
wage gains and low prices
has kept inflation in check.
John McAuliffe, chief
executive
of
Sylvan
Learning, a company that
offers tutoring to students
from kindergarten through
high school, is hiring more
teachers and expanding. Yet
it is cutting costs to maintain
profits, rather than raising
prices.
The company has opened
10 new locations since
March, creating about 100
jobs, mostly part-time.
“More people have the
ability to afford tutoring for
their children,” McAuliffe
says.
But the company sees
little need to raise pay.
“A lot of teachers look
for supplemental income,”
he said. “We’ve always been
able to find them.”
Economists forecast the
economy will expand at
roughly a 2 percent pace this
year, about the same as it has
grown since the recession
ended.
The economy appears
resilient enough for the
Federal Reserve to keep
raising its benchmark interest
rate. In a report to Congress
on Friday, the Fed signaled
its belief that the economy is
on a firm footing.
Tesla to build giant battery in Australia amid energy crisis
SYDNEY (AP) — Tesla
announced on Friday it will
build the world’s largest lith-
ium-ion battery in southern
Australia, part of a bid to
solve an energy crisis that
has led to ongoing blackouts
across the region.
Tesla will partner with
French renewable energy
company Neoen to build the
100-megawatt battery farm
in South Australia state, with
Tesla CEO Elon Musk prom-
ising to deliver the system
within 100 days of signing
the contract or it will be free.
The billionaire entrepreneur
originally made the 100-day
pledge via Twitter in March,
and he and South Australia’s
government confirmed on
Friday that the deadline was
part of their official agree-
ment.
“The system will be three
times more powerful than
any system on earth,” Musk
told reporters in the state
capital, Adelaide. “This is
not like a minor foray into
the frontier — this is like
going three times further
Ben Macmahon/AAP Image via AP
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks about the development
of the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery in Adelaide,
Australia, Friday.
than anyone’s gone before.”
South Australia, which
relies heavily on solar and
wind-generated energy, has
been scrambling to find a
way to bolster its fragile
power grid since the entire
state suffered a blackout
during a storm last year.
Further blackouts plagued
the state over the next few
months.
The battery farm is part
of a $420 million plan
announced in March by
South Australia Premier Jay
Weatherill to make the state
independent of the nation’s
power grid. The Australian
Energy Market Operator,
which manages the national
grid, has warned of poten-
tial shortages of gas-fired
electricity across southeast
Australia by late next year.
The shortage is looming
as Australia is expected to
soon overtake Qatar as the
world’s biggest exporter of
liquid natural gas. Australia
is also a major exporter of
coal, which fires much of its
electricity generation.
The South Australia
battery will store energy from
Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind
Farm near Jamestown, about
120 miles north of Adelaide.
It will deliver energy during
peak usage hours to help
maintain the state’s supply,
and could power 30,000
homes, Tesla said.
“You can essentially
charge up the battery packs
when you have excess
power and where the cost is
very low, and it discharges
when the cost of production
is high — this lowers the
average cost per hour to the
customer,” Musk said. “It’s
a fundamental efficiency
improvement.”
The installation of the
battery is expected to be
complete by December. The
cost of the project has not
been released.
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