Business
Hospitality
workers
see wages
increase
AgLife
B
Thursday, September 2, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
WALLOWA COUNTY
Grim harvest
Bank
closing its
downtown
branch
Oregon’s average
hospitality wage
jumps 10.5% in
past 12 months
Adams Avenue
location of Umpqua
Bank to close in late
October
By MIKE ROGOWAY
By DICK MASON
The Oregonian
The Observer
SALEM — Jobs in
restaurants and taverns fre-
quently sit at the bottom
end of the pay scale, with
waiters, line cooks and bar-
tenders sometimes treated
as easily replaceable — and
paid accordingly.
COVID-19 has turned
that calculus on its head.
Pandemic shutdowns
put thousands of Oregon
hospitality workers out of
work. And as the economy
reopened, hotels, restau-
rants, taverns and gyms
are finding they have to
pay a premium to get those
workers back.
Oregon’s average hos-
pitality wage has jumped
by an astonishing 10.5% in
just the past 12 months, to
$19.49 an hour in July. For a
full-time worker, that works
out to a $3,800 raise on an
annual basis.
Many hospitality busi-
nesses are offering bonuses
to bring in workers. The
McMenamins hotel and
brewpub chain is offering
$1,000, for example, to new
hires who take jobs as line
cooks or kitchen managers.
The dramatic pay hikes
reflect the weird economics
of the pandemic.
It took nearly nine years
after the Great Recession for
Oregon hospitality wages
to return to their pre-down-
turn levels. At that time, the
economy was very slow to
regain its footing.
In the wake of the pan-
demic recession, though,
most sectors snapped right
back. And businesses in
those fields that recovered
quickly began snapping up
workers, some of whom
had been laid off from their
old jobs in the hospitality
industry.
That left restaurants,
hotels and bars struggling to
find staff to fill their estab-
lishments — and paying
a premium to get those
workers they could find.
The numbers show
that these businesses have
been only partially suc-
cessful. Leisure and hospi-
tality employment remains
down 18% from the summer
of 2019, even as the rest
of Oregon’s economy has
largely recovered.
Why does Oregon have
fewer people working in lei-
sure and hospitality now?
Well, bartenders and waiters
didn’t pack up and move out
of state. Instead, many of
them took other work while
their old jobs were shut
down by the pandemic.
“A lot of them just said,
‘I need to work somewhere,’
and looked around, and
found something else,” said
David Cooke, economist
with the Oregon Employ-
ment Department.
Amazon and other online
retailers and delivery ser-
vices continued hiring
through the pandemic and
raised wages as it became
harder to find workers.
Oregon wages are up
overall, so hospitality busi-
nesses had to raise their
own pay to catch up.
“It’s based on supply
and demand,” Cooke said,
“where the supply of people
who are available and able
and ready to work is rela-
tively low compared to the
demand.”
The drought and the accompa-
nying hot wind that further dried
up the crops never allowed them to
grow, Dunham said.
Dan Butterfield, who farms
with his sons, Robert and Eric, and
their wives, raises about 600 acres
of DNS near Joseph. He agreed the
heat was a killer this year.
“This heat was relentless,” But-
terfield said. “It was pretty hard
on it. (Wheat) just doesn’t grow
as well under that intense heat.
Alfalfa does well in heat, but
wheat and grass don’t do well.”
He said that although DNS is
fairly drought resistant and a “pro-
tein wheat,” it still didn’t yield as
large a harvest as he had hoped.
He said he cut one dryland field
on the moraine he estimated as a
yield of 35 bushels per acre. He
said Portland prices are more than
$10 a bushel, but it costs about $1
a bushel to get it there by truck.
Being a protein wheat, DNS
tends to make more protein in
LA GRANDE — La
Grande is set to lose one
of its two Umpqua Bank
branches. The branch 1215
Adams Ave. will close per-
manently at 2 p.m. Oct. 28.
The Island City branch
of Umpqua Bank, 3106
Island Ave., will stay open.
A statement from
Umpqua Bank’s headquar-
ters in Portland implied, but
does not specifically state,
that the Adams Avenue
branch is being closed
because there is less of a
need for brick and mortar
banks in today’s internet
age.
“Umpqua continues to
adapt to the reality that
people visit store loca-
tions less and less and
now do most of their day-
to-day banking by com-
puter or phone. As a result,
we’ve been consolidating
our number of stores the
past few years based on a
variety of factors, such as
overall foot traffic and prox-
imity to other locations,”
the statement read.
Customer accounts and
loans at the Adams Avenue
branch will be transferred
to the Island City branch.
No “customer action” will
be needed for this to occur,
according to the statement.
The company said it will
reach out to customers who
are affected by the closure.
“During the transi-
tion, we are committed
to working with each and
every customer to make
sure they have the support
they need,” the company’s
statement read.
A statement on Umpqua
Bank’s web page for its
Adams Avenue branch said
of the upcoming closure,
“While this means the end
of our in-person relation-
ship at this location, we are
eager to continue to serve
you at nearby stores and
support your banking needs
through our online and
mobile banking services.”
The web page also stated
that people who have a safe
deposit box at the Adams
Avenue branch are asked to
come in and close their box
See, Drought/Page B2
See, Bank/Page B2
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Brothers Kurt, left, and Kevin Melville operate combines harvesting dryland wheat north of Enterprise on Wednesday, Aug. 18,
2021. The Melvilles said the dryland crop was particularly devastated by this year’s drought.
Farmers get low crop yields after summer drought
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA COUNTY — A
hot, dry summer seems to have
come to an end with a few days of
rain that grain farmers didn’t nec-
essarily need as they got going on
harvest.
“With most harvests you have a
little rain,” Kevin Melville of Cor-
nerstone Farms said.
Cornerstone, which Melville
operates with his father, Tim, his
brother, Kurt, and their wives, is
one of the largest small-grains
producers in Wallowa County,
growing wheat but also sizable
crops of hay, peas, canola and
mustard.
Possibly the worst of what
was harvested was the Mel-
villes’ dryland wheat. The Mel-
ville brothers were hard at it har-
vesting dark northern spring
(DNS) wheat north of Enterprise
on Wednesday, Aug. 18, but they
were disappointed in what the
unirrigated fields were yielding.
Kevin said they were getting
about six bushels per acre there
when they normally get 60-70
bushels.
“It’s a good thing we have
insurance,” he said.
Cornerstone’s fall-planted irri-
gated wheat isn’t doing nearly as
bad, Melville said.
“With the irrigated, every-
thing we’ve cut so far is slightly
below normal,” he said, adding
the yield has been about 120
bushels per acre, when it should
be around 130.
“Fall wheat is within the
margin of error,” he said. “Every-
thing’s about 10 bushels lower
than average on the irrigated side.”
Not worth it
Many of the crops are hardly
worth the trouble.
Melville said they didn’t even
bother with their peas and timothy
grass hay.
Rather than wasting the fuel
to attempt to harvest a crop not
worth the effort, “We just walked
away from those,” he said. “We
never harvested the timothy hay.”
Unfortunately, they didn’t have
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Kurt Melville, of Cornerstone Farms, unloads wheat after harvesting a dryland field
north of Enterprise on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. The dryland crops were particular-
ly hurt by this year’s drought.
crop insurance on the peas or tim-
othy grass.
Jim Dunham, who raises feed
barley off Dunham Road north
of Enterprise, agreed the drought
was a killer. He was in a holding
pattern in mid-August, waiting for
the rain to dry out. His prospects
for harvest were not looking good.
“There just isn’t any because
of the drought. I’ll run the com-
bine through, but that’s about it,”
Dunham said. “It’s a very poor
crop.”
In fact, he said, in the 60-plus
years he’s been farming there, it’s
about as bad as it’s ever been.
“This is as poor a crop as I’ve
ever seen,” he said, agreeing that
it must get better in the future. “I
hope it don’t get worse.”
Dunham said he usually rotates
his barley crop with hay to feed
the 350-400 cattle that provide the
mainstay of his income.
He said he too is hoping federal
crop insurance will bail him out
this year.
“I hope to get enough back to
what I’ve got into the crop,” he
said.
He compared his dryland barley
to what the Melvilles are getting in
their dryland DNS.
“It’s about the same compar-
ison to the barley I raise,“ Dunham
said.
For barley, that usually means
about 2 tons an acre. This year,
he’s hoping to get half a ton per
acre.
“It’s hardly enough to even
combine,” he said. “If we get more
than that, I’ll be tickled to death.”
Drought’s the killer
Brokerage accounts may net better investment earnings
LIZ
WESTON
ASK LIZ
Dear Liz: I’m retired, age 67.
I have a SEP that requires me to
pay taxes on any withdrawals. I
also have standard savings and
checking accounts. The SEP has
been earning 13% to 14% annu-
ally, and of course the savings
account earns very little. Where
does it make sense for me to place
savings each month — in the bank
or the SEP?
Answer: Well, not the SEP. A
SEP is a simplified employee pen-
sion plan that only allowed con-
tributions as long as you were
employed by the company that
offered it.
Besides, the reason for the dif-
ference in returns is what’s in the
account, not the account itself.
The SEP probably is invested in
stocks, while the savings account
is just cash earning the current low
interest rates. On the other hand,
the money in your savings account
is FDIC insured so that you won’t
lose your principal.
Money in the stock market is at
risk because stocks don’t always
rise in value. (Over time, a diver-
sified mix of stocks typically will
earn better returns than other
types of investments, but you can’t
count on the money being there if
you need it in a hurry.)
If you’re retired and don’t
have earned income, you can’t
put money into other retirement
accounts such as IRAs or Roth
IRAs. You can, however, open
a brokerage account and invest
money through that. You’ll still
pay taxes on any withdrawals, but
if you hold the investments for at
least a year you can benefit from
lower capital gains tax rates.
Dear Liz: I’m attempting to
become as paperless as possible
while also organizing all of our
financial information into one
place so if one of us dies, the other
(or our child) will be able to access
everything in one concise source.
My current system is downloading
all bank and investment accounts
and medical payments onto
memory sticks. One is kept in the
safe deposit box, the other hidden.
Is there a better, safer system out
there that would not involve a third
party?
Answer: If you’re unwilling to
use a secure online storage site,
then your system is a reasonable
if somewhat laborious option. You
should be sure, however, that your
trusted person will have access to
your computer for the most up-to-
date information. The person also
probably will need access to your
phone, since identity authentica-
tion codes are often sent by text.
You’ll need to record passwords
for your devices and consider cre-
ating a list of logins and passwords
for all the sites you regularly use.
If you use a password manager,
you often can set up emergency
access for trusted people.
Going paperless is usually the
most convenient, safe and eco-
logically friendly option, but your
trusted person won’t be able to
rummage through your desk to
find clues about where your assets
are, what bills need to be paid
and what services should be shut
down. Otherwise, as one friend put
it, your frequent flier miles could
disappear while your Netflix sub-
scription continues indefinitely.
If you want a system that
doesn’t involve frequent trips to
your safe deposit box, consider
sites such as Everplans that allow
you to store important informa-
tion and to name people who can
be given access if you’re incapac-
itated or dead. Your accountant
or attorney may be able to recom-
mend other sites that perform sim-
ilar functions.
———
Liz Weston, Certified Financial
Planner, is a personal finance col-
umnist for NerdWallet. Questions
may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel
Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA
91604, or by using the “Contact”
form at asklizweston.com.