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Monday, August 27, 2012

Bonneville County makes CNN Money "Where the Jobs Are" list

It's been a while since the area made one of the "Best Places to Live" lists, but here's Bonneville County ranking No. 15 in a national "Where the Jobs Are" rundown, between Houston County, Georgia and Cass County, North Dakota.

The article cites nuclear energy, medicine, tourism and retail as the top economic drivers.

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/jobs/2012/08/20/best-places-job-growth.moneymag/15.html

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Notes from my summer vacation

When it comes to search engine optimization, this photo seems to have mysteriously strong powers. I don't understand it at all, not even a tiny bit.
As I survey the BizMojo Idaho stats (which I do every day), I've noticed that some of the posts from last year are climbing back into visibility. That leads me to suppose that there are new readers who are digging through "the vaults." This I find gratifying, because I'm on the East Coast this week and limited in my ability (or desire) to stay up on the latest business news.

This week the most-read post is http://www.bizmojoidaho.com/2011/10/two-idaho-falls-drive-in-theaters-for.html, from last October.

A little squib I wrote later that month about Idaho Falls needing an In-N-Out burger http://www.bizmojoidaho.com/2011/10/in-n-out-burger-possible-if-not.html, has racked up 132 pageviews.

Two posts about Carl's Jr., one from December and another from Februray (both now out of date), got 228 pageviews. Because a lot of traffic comes to this blog from organic search, and because one of the main search terms bringing eyeballs to this page is "juicy burger," I have to assume this is why Carl's Jr. continues to reign supreme on the BizMojo Idaho Hit Parade.

Without a doubt there's someone who knows more about this and could explain it in detail, but it would probably cost a lot of money. Not gonna happen, since the Google Gods dropped the dime on me after this smart-alecky post, http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1127161227049840947#editor/target=post;postID=7734341763842076838, which I later adapted to Idaho Falls Magazine.

With our first anniversary approaching (Sept. 5), I'm happy this blog has gotten the acceptance it has. There's been a learning curve, which I never get tired of talking about. It has been an interesting ride -- so much like what I did in newspapers (producing fresh, engaging content nearly every day), yet totally different (when it comes to social media, the reader is way more involved in deciding what is news).

People have asked me, "Why don't you write a book?" What's interesting is that if you were to count the words I've posted in the past year there would probably be enough to fill one. If you've got the time to do that or (better yet) a computer program that will allow you to do it instantly, I'd love to know when I might be in a position to pass "War and Peace" (560,000 words) or "Atlas Shrugged (645,000 words). By the way, I actually waded through Ayn Rand's tome in 1975, mainly in an effort to impress a young woman at the University of Delaware (whose name I will not reveal).

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Georgia steel company plans fabrication plant near Ucon

Cives Steel Co.'s One Lincoln Street project in Boston. The Georgia-based fabricator is hoping to have permits in place by this fall to build a 54,000-square-foot plant near Ucon, its first west of the Mississippi.
This scoop came first from our friends at http://idahofallsprojects.wordpress.com, who posted it last Thursday after looking through permit applications in the Bonneville County Planning and Zoning office.

A Georgia-based steel company called Cives Steel Co., intends to build a new fabrication plant in the Idaho Falls area. A 54,000-square-foot building will house its fabrication area and offices, and there will also be five more outbuildings, just under 5,000 square feet between them. The project will be completed in three stages.

It is estimated that the project could add up to 175 new local jobs. Cives Steel says it will be the company's first plant west of the Mississippi.

Cives Vice President John Donovan told Marissa Bodnar of Local News 8 that after nearly three years of scouting out locations in the Northwest and Southwest, they settled on Idaho Falls, largely because of the local work force and its reputation.



Cives Steel Company created the steel that supports the Hearst building in New York City and the Boston Red Sox training field in Fort Myers. For a look at all the projects they have been involved in, follow this link: http://www.civessteel.com/portfolio.

Donovan said told Bodnar the new plant will most likely go up on Yellowstone Highway near the Ucon city limit. Initially he said they expect to hire about 75 people. He said Cives is hoping to have land and permit approvals by mid-September and the foundation poured by mid-October. If the weather cooperates, they could be producing steel by the first of the year, he said.

Here is a link to the video from Local News 8: http://www.localnews8.com/news/Steel-plant-to-bring-150-plus-jobs-to-eastern-Idaho/-/308662/16203446/-/13kcsbs/-/index.html

SpeedConnect LLC names managers

Donna Nims
Tom Carey
Tom Carey and Donna Nims have joined SpeedConnect LLC, a new high-speed wireless Internet service provider with regional headquarters in Idaho Falls.

Carey is technical operations manager for the state. His background includes extended tenures at DigitalBridge Communications and Teton Wireless, where he led teams to construct more than 65 WiMAX transmission sites in 15 markets, as well as developing standardized processes for site selection and construction. He is heading up SpeedConnect's efforts in Idaho for mission critical network operations, centralized warehouse systems, and technician recruitment, training and management, in addition to new technology deployments and network expansion.

Nims is the general manager for Idaho.  She has years of experience in the wireless broadband industry, beginning with the launch of Wavepath in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1990s. She has also worked in sales, marketing, product management and web technologies, with a special focus on channel development at Concentric Network and DigitalBridge Communications.

SpeedConnect has been in the high-speed wireless Internet business since 2001, providing services in Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Eastern Idaho joblessness continues to decline

The employment news for Idaho from July was about the best in the nation -- only Idaho and Rhode Island posted declines in their jobless rates -- and eastern Idaho's numbers were even better.

The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped another two-tenths of a percentage point, falling to a three-year low of 7.5 percent. In the Idaho Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area the rate dropped from 6.7 in June to 6.2 percent, down from 7.3 percent in July 2011. Rexburg posted a jobless rate in July of 5.3 percent, down from 6 percent in June and 6.5 percent in July 2011.

Idaho’s rate, which has been lower than the national rate since September 2001, has fallen dramatically during the past year from a post-recession high of 8.9 percent in July 2011. Despite employment slipping slightly, there were still over 19,000 more Idahoans at work in July than a year earlier while the number out of work dropped again to 58,600 – 9,700 fewer than in July 2011 and the lowest number of unemployed in three years.

New hires were at their highest rate for a July since 2007, although these new hires overwhelmingly filled jobs that had been held by people who retired or left for some other reason. The replacement factor in the jobs picture will increase as more and more  baby-boomers decide to take their pensions.

The Conference Board, a Washington, D.C. business think tank, estimated fewer than five unemployed workers for every two posted job openings in Idaho, the first time that ratio has been that low since late 2008. At the peak of the recession in late 2009, there were nine unemployed workers for every two posted job openings in the state.

Only 10 rural counties recorded double-digit unemployment rates in July, unchanged from June but down from 17 in July 2011. The highest rate was 17.3 percent in resource-dependent Adams County, up over a point from June but over two points lower than in July 2011.

Here's a breakdown of July 2012 unemployment for all eastern Idaho counties:

Bingham: 6.2 percent
Bonneville: 6.2 percent
Butte: 5.8 percent
Clark: 7.0 percent
Custer: 7.1 percent
Fremont: 6.5 percent
Jefferson: 6.3 percent
Lemhi: 10.3 percent
Madison: 4.9 percent
Teton: 6.5 percent