Business Generation

Oregons seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in October, essentially unchanged from 9.6 percent in September. The unemployment rate has been below 10 percent for the past seven months, since March, when the rate was 9.9 percent. The recent low point for Oregons rate was in May, when it reached 9.3 percent.  In October, 177,350 Oregonians were unemployed. This is 20,761 fewer individuals than in October 2010, when 198,111 Oregonians were unemployed.

At 1,626,400, Oregons seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment has risen for three consecutive months following a loss of 3,300 in July, reflecting the recent trend of modest yet uneven job growth. Employment rose by 800 in October, following a revised gain of 2,700 in September. October job gains were led by professional and business services (+2,300 jobs), government (+1,400), and trade, transportation and utilities (+1,300).

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What the heck, I said this morning, it’s Friday, the last Friday before a holiday week next week, so let’s have some fun. I set out to explore the creativity embedded in blog comments that are distributed en-masse but disguised to look like they’re actually individual comments for individual posts.

I see patterns. Comments like this…

Good stuff… Just killing some time browsing searches and found your post. Great looking website. I’ll have to save the page to come back. Cheers

…look reasonable at first glance. But then you discover they’re posted in excruciating mass repetition on multiple posts on multiple blogs, to embed links and gain artificial search engine advantage. That exact same

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Popular online gaming company Zynga faces an unexpected scandal in advance of its upcoming initial public offering after The Wall Street Journal accused the company of forcing workers to return stock options.

Like many other technology startups, Zynga attracted higher quality employees by offering a company shares in place of higher wages. However, the company hoped to avoid a situation where early employees wound up with far more in stock than their work merited, so The Journal reports that the company began demanding some employees give up their rights to unvested stock or be fired.

The news source suggests that the practice could open up Zynga to potential lawsuits and also threatens an important foundation of Silicon Valley.

Fortune, however, portrays the practice differently, noting that Zynga makes a habit of offering under-performing employees an opportunity to step down in the company rather than being fired. Read more…

The Oregon economy firmed somewhat in September. The Oregon Measure of Economic Activity improved to -0.78 from –1.12 in August. The less-volatile three month moving average improved to -1.03 from -1.13 in August. The University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators™ rose 0.2 percent to 89.1 (1997=100) in September, breaking a string of 5 consecutive monthly declines.

Further comments:

• While the Oregon Measure of Economic Activity showed improvement, it still indicates Oregon is growing below the trend of growth established over the 1990-2011 period. Manufacturing, construction, household and services sectors all contributed to economic weakness.

• Particularly sharp falls in US consumer sentiment and the interest rate spread weighed on the UO Index, while initial unemployment claims improved, falling to their lowest level since March of this year. Core ma

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Youve got your startup brewing, you love the idea, youre gathering a team, and you want everything to be perfect. So do you move to Silicon Valley? Silicon Alley? Austin TX?

I know of people whove moved from where they were to where they thought they should be, before starting the company. Their assumption, when they do, is that the new place is better. It has better access to investment, management team, mentors, and sometimes even channels and such.

Does that make sense? Do you move first, then start? Heres what I think:

1. Business is to enhance life, not life to enhance business.
2. Ive posted here both home is where business is good, and business is where home is good. I dont mind the contradiction. Its another example of how almost everything in small business and entrepreneurship is basically case-by-case.

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Intel, long one of the largest names in personal computing, surprised the market by announcing record-high earnings through its fourth quarter.

The company brought in a total of $14.2 billion with $3.5 billion profits, increasing revenue by 28 percent year-over-year and profit by 17 percent. The company saw similar substantial jumps from the second quarter of the year, increasing revenue 9 percent and profit by 17 percent.

“Intel delivered record-setting results … driven largely by double-digit unit growth in notebook PCs,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. “We also saw continued strength in the data center fueled by the ongoing growth of mobile and cloud computing.”

The success is notable in particular because of the difficulties Intel has faced from the rise of the smartphone and tablet, both of which have eaten into the companys traditional markets.

The New York Times reports that the rapid growth of the server market could help to sustain Intel even as more energy-efficient chip designs, those more popular in mobile devices, struggle to gain acceptance for use in large-scale servers. A Read more…