Metrics for Kotek’s “Prosperity Roadmap”

Somehow lost in the ridicule of the Orwellian name given to the Prosperity Council is the stated metric for success. The Chief Prosperity Office is to get Oregon into the top 10 of CNBC’s business ranking and workforce ranking.

Where are we now? Take a look for yourself. We’re 39th for business.

What would it take to move from below average to the top ten? That might be hard for the average voter to discern, but it could help to look at what states are there now. Turns out none of them are deeply blue. There are deeply red states and many purple states, but none with a long-term concentration of power in the Democratic Party like Oregon has known. Those kinds of states can be found in the bottom half with the Beaver State.

Workforce development is not so much a separate ranking as a component of CNBC’s business ranking. Oregon is more in the middle there, at 23rd. Perhaps that was chosen as a consolation prize, both because we are closer and it hints at spending more money on education.

If we’re going to pick one subcomponent over the others, that is itself revealing. Those other components are: the economy, infrastructure, cost of doing business, business friendliness, quality of life, and technology & innovation. Does this imply we’d rather have a top-rated workforce than lower costs of doing business or being more business-friendly?

Cherry-picking a favorite subcomponent might come with a belief that success there will drive success in the others, or compensate for deficits in the others, but again, take a look at the top ten states. They generally beat Oregon in all the components. Might an unfriendly disposition impact the demand for labor which influences the quality of our workforce? Might too generous public assistance incent less laborforce participation?

I welcome the desire to be in that top ten. I hope that looking at the policy differences between us and the states that are at the top of CNBC’s list can offer some hints as to what aught to change around here.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.