Businesses Are Attracted By Boise's Quality of Life

Major Players, as well as small businesses, continue to add jobs.

By Tracy Loew :: The Idaho Statesman

The Treasure Valley boasts close to a dozen large corporate head-quarters, making it unique for a community its size.

The area also is home to a growing number of small and startup companies.

Like business communities across the country, though, mergers, acquisitions and consolidations are shaking things up.

Boise-based Albertson's Inc. recently merged with competitor American Stores Co., more than doubling in size and adding hundreds of employees here. It's now the nation's second-largest super-market chain.

Relative newcomer Micron Technology Inc. has weathered several years of lagging profits in the computer chip industry , growing into a global concern. And Extended Systerns Inc., which develops products that help mobile phones, hand-held computers and other devices talk to one another, recently went public.

After 31 years as one of Idaho's signature companies, the Ore-Ida Foods Co. headquarters was moved in 1999 to Pittsburgh by parent company H.J. Heinz Inc.

Boise's banking industry was shaken up by a wave of mergers, which swallowed up Boise-based West One and resulted in layoffs at U.S. Bank.

Businesses are attracted to the Treasure Valley by a skilled work force, relatively low utility and tax rates and the area's famed quality of life.

Those factors have attracted a number of new call centers to the area -including centers for Sears, Micron Electronics, TCI Primestar , MCI/Worldcom and Airborne Ex- press -creating jobs for close to 5,000 residents. The centers take calls from all over the country to take orders, answer billing questions or make travel arrangements.

And the area quickly is becoming a regional health-care center. "The evolution of the economy is a very dynamic kind of process," state economist Mike Ferguson said. "There's a certain amount of luck in the draw."

Other major players in the local economy include electronics company Hewlett-Packard Co., construction contractor Morrison Knudsen Corp., forest-products company Boise Cascade Corp., agribusiness giant J .R. Simplot Co. and computer manufacturer Micron Electronics Inc. Still, the bulk of the area's jobs are provided by small companies across several industries. Companies large and small report their biggest challenge is finding and retaining workers, especially on the lower end of the pay scale.

The Treasure Valley's unemployment rate has remained around 3 percent for the past few years, com- pared with about 5 percent statewide and 4.4 percent nation- wide.

Employers are responding by raising wages, adding training and benefits programs and stepping up recruitment efforts.

Population growth, which fueled much of this decade's economic expansion, is expected to slow this year. But the area will continue to ad d jobs, Ferguson said. Many of those jobs are being created in some surprising sectors - recreational vehicle manufacturing, publishing and education, to name a few.

More residents work in retail sales than in any other sector. And, although many of the area's traditional resource-based manufacturing jobs are dwindling, they are being replaced by other goods-producing jobs, said Derek Santos, an economist for the Idaho Division of Financial Management.

The Division expects employment to grow between 2 percent and 2.7 percent each of the next three years.

That compares with growth between 2.6 percent to 3.2 percent the previous three years. Last year , U .S. job growth was 1 percent.

About 42,000 people work in downtown Boise.

1. Micron Technology Inc. 9,151 
2. Mountain Home Air Force Base 4,824 
3. Albertson's Inc. 4, 100 
4. Hewlett-Packard Co. 4,000 
5. Boise School District 3,000 
6. St. Luke's Regional Medical Center 2,973 
7. Saint Alphonsus RMC 2,540 
8. Micron Electronics Inc. 2,515 
9. J.R. Simplot Co. 2,480 
10. Boise State University 2,400

Source: Figures provided by each employer.