Manufacturing still butters the Rock River Valley bread

Add comment February 4th, 2010 06:31pm Alex Gary

A reporter on one of our internal committees asked me if we could quantify the most important industries by jobs.

I said an easier way may be to quantify the industries by compenstation. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis does a great job of it.

The BEA’s 2008 figures are out and — surprise — manufacturing still pays most of the bills in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties.

In 2008, the BEA estimates there was $8.9 billion in total compensation paid to Rock River Valley residents. Here are the top 17 industries by compensation and the portions of the overall pie.

Industry                                  compensation     pctg.

Manufacturing                         $2.56 billion     28.8%

Health care                             $1.16 billion     13.1%

Government                           $1.11 billion     12.4% (I believe this includes public school districts)

Retail trade                             $559.5 million    6.3%

Construction                          $535.7 million     6.0%

Finance/ins.                            $453.2 million     5.1%

Administrative                        $408.7 million     4.6% (stretches over a lot of categories)

Logistics                                $374.3 million     4.2%

Other services                        $296.7 million     3.3%

Scientific and technical           $245.4 million     2.8%

Accomodation/food service   $207.9 million     2.3%

Information                           $110.2 million      1.2%

Education services                $58.8 million        0.7% (guessing this is private school education)

Real estate and rental           $45.6 million        0.5%

Arts, entertainment               $32.2 million        0.4%

Farm compensation              $20.0 million        0.2%

Company management         $17 million           0.2%

Of course, when you look at growth, it’s a different story. Compensation in manufacturing has gone up 6 percent since 2001 and company management declined 32 percent. The hot growth industries are administrative and waste services, up 59 percent, health care, up 54 percent, and private educational services, up 49 percent.

Government copmensation has increased 33 percent. We can only compare logistics — transportation and warehousing — with 2005 and it was up naerly 24 percent since then.

January’s Belvidere assembly plant production

Add comment February 4th, 2010 05:12pm Alex Gary

Workers at Chrysler Group LLC’s Belvidere assembly plant churned out 8,668 Dodge Calibers, Jeep Compasses and Jeep Patriots in two weeks in January.

The plant was closed the first two weeks of the year. In January of 2008, workers finished just 4,752 vehicles as Chrysler, then under the control of Cerberus Capital Management, put the brakes quickly on production as the economy was in free fall.

All three of the products are to be phased out in 2012 and Italian carmaker Fiat, which now controls Chrysler, has pointedly not guaranteed the plant future product. But a blogger is speculating that changes could be announced at the plant well before 2012.

Toyota troubles mount

Add comment February 3rd, 2010 11:18am Alex Gary

Here’s a sampling of Toyota news from the Associated Press — a mix of good and bad as the Japanese automaker tries to deal with quality issues.

* Toyota is giving U.S. dealers up to $75,000 to win back customer trust in the wake of the accelerator pedal safety recall. The money is to help dealers extend service hours and provide car washes and other services.

* U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood confirmed the government is investigating potential electrical problems in Toyota vehicles.

*  The NHTSA also has received more than 100 complaints about brakes in Toyota’s Prius hybrid, which is not part of the 4.5 million vehicle accelerator pedal recall. Two of the complaints involved accidents resulting in injuries.

The troubles may not end up being confined to Toyota. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent a letter to Elkhart, Ind.-based CTS, which made the defective pedals, notifying the company that it wants to investigate the pedals it makes for other automakers. CTS is a supplier to a wide swath of companies, including Honda, Nissan, Ford and Chrysler.

Trying to figure out prices

Add comment February 1st, 2010 12:19pm Alex Gary

The average sale price of houses in the Rock River Valley tumbled in the first part of 2009, then started to grow in the summer and fall before declining again in November and December.

That tracks pretty closely with the tides of foreclosures. In the early part of the year, sales of houses owned by banks, mortgage or other lending institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) made up as much as 1/3 of the monthly sales.

In the middle part of the year, a new state law requiring increased notification to troubled borrowers reset the foreclosure clock on many houses and caused a sharp drop in filings. But the foreclosure downturn was temporary and filings rose throughout the year and, as a result, average prices began to drop again.

Here’s a look at the numbers.

Month    bank-owned sales  total sales   Pct.   total avg. price   percent change

January           68                   235        28.9%   $114,555            NA

February         83                   226        36.7%   $110,098           -3.9%

March           124                   355        34.9%   $110,484            0.4%

April             109                   370         29.5%  $110,674            0.2%

May               99                    371        26.7%   $110,968            0.3%

June              104                   464        22.4%   $113,477            2.3%

July               108                   533        20.3%   $116,062            2.3%

August            99                   482        20.5%   $116,422            0.3%

September      85                   439        19.4%   $116,924            0.4%

October        101                   520        19.4%   $118,351            1.2%

November     113                  458         24.7%   $116,809          -1.3%

December      132                  420        31.4%    $116,066         -0.6%

Patents plunged in 2009

Add comment January 28th, 2010 12:04pm Alex Gary

In the latest installment of bad economic news from 2009, the number of patents won by local engineers, researchers and inventors fell to its lowest level since 2005.

Here are the patents awarded to people in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties:

2000 — 144

2001 — 162

2002 — 136

2003 — 142

2004 — 116

2005 — 107

2006 — 144

2007 — 157

2008 — 130

2009 — 109

It typically takes at least 18 months from submission to win a patent, so it’s not surprising patents fell this year since research and development usually is scaled back when revenues plunge.

Still, the concerning thing about the numbers is the area may never reach the levels of patents won in 2001 simply because we’ve lost several companies that did R&D locally. By far, Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. is our biggest research operation. Engineers from the company won 147 patents from 2000 through 2009. That was nearly three times as many as the next biggest patent producer, Southern Imperial Inc. of Rockford.

There are several other companies locally creating new products, procedures or processes, including Schneider Electric, Cadbury Adams and Woodword Governor in Loves Park, Taylor Co. in Rockton and Greenlee Textron, Estwing Manufacturing Co. and Thermo Fisher Scientific in Rockford.

But the Rock River Valley economy has lost several companies that did critical research, including Amerock Corp., which had a division creating new cabinet hardware. Atwood Mobile Products employees won 17 patents this past decade for automotive advances before leaving Rockford. Pacific Scientific, known as PacSci Motion Control when it closed up locally in 2009, made several advances in research for motors and drives.

Area reaches a dubious milestone

Add comment January 26th, 2010 11:49am Alex Gary

The number of chancery cases, which are mostly made up of foreclosure actions, topped 3,000 in the Rock River Valley for the first time every in 2009.

From a positive standpoint, the number of foreclosures filed increased just 4.5 percent from 2008 after jumping 21.5 percent in 2006, 13.6 percent in 2007 and 25 percent in 2008.

But that is misleading. Early in 2009, the state legislature passed a law requiring lein holders to notify borrowers in writing about the upcoming actions. That reset the foreclosure clock for hundreds of thousands around the state and caused foreclosure filings to plunge dramatically in April, May and June. So the fact that filings topped 2008 despite the new law means 2010 may see another dramatic rise in foreclosures.

If there is one consolation, the foreclosure pain is being felt evenly in the Rock River Valley. Since 2000, foreclosures in Ogle County have risen 168 percent, in Winnebago County they have jumped 243 percent and foreclosures are up 295 percent in Boone County.

Foreclosure filings

Year     Winnebago     Boone     Ogle     Total

2000         932             150         102     1,184

2001       1,154            222         124     1,500

2002       1,270            267         167     1,704

2003       1,321            216         164     1,701

2004       1,350            226         165     1,741

2005       1,377            216         115     1,708

2006       1,548            330         197     2,075

2007       1,776            394         176     2,346

2008       2,177            514         241     2,932

2009       2,199            593         274     3,066

Source: Circuit Clerk’s offices of Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties

Car sales continue to sink

Add comment January 25th, 2010 10:19am Alex Gary

The number of cars, trucks and SUVs registered after purchase set a new five-year low in December as car dealerships finished up a dismal year.

In December, residents of Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties registered just 3,474 vehicles after purchase.The was nearly 200 fewer than November, the prior low, and 13.7 percent fewer than the 4,027 registered in December 2008.

Tracking car sales registrations is the best way to track how car dealerships are doing, but it is not perfect. It tracks where the owners registered the cars not where the vehicle was purchased. If someone bought a car in Beloit, Wis., but registered it in Rockford it would count as a Winnebago county registration.

December marked the 15th straight month that registrations were down year-over-year and the fifth time in the past six months that they were down more than 10 percent. New car sales registrations, which had gotten a boost from the federal governmen’s cash-for-clunkers program in July and August,were down 18.6 percent in December.

Used car registrations fell 12.6 percent.

If there is one positive for the existing dealerships, it is that the sales are being spread out over  fewer dealerships. A look at the Rockford Polk City Directory, compiled by a Register Star reader, showed that between 2008 and 2009 11 more dealerships closed than opened.

For the year, registrations were down 13.1 percent and declined for the third straight year. The Register Star has records back to 2005. Here’s how registrations have trended.

Year     Used     New        Total

2005    58,993   17,158    76,151

2006    71,381   17,327    88,708

2007   61,297    15,099    76,396

2008   58,921    13,640    72,561

2009   51,224    10,163    61,387

Local bankruptcies topped 300 in October

Add comment November 9th, 2009 02:13pm Alex Gary

The number of people and business owners filing for bankruptcy protection in October shattered local records since the federal government made it more difficult to discharge debts in 2005.

In October, there were 307 filings in Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties, easily topping the previous post-bankruptcy change high of 271 back in July.

The all-time high was in October 2005 when a new federal law took affect significantly raising the standards for people looking to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, where you liquidate your assets and debts. In that month there were 1,388 filings.

Bank deposits grow in bad economy

Add comment October 19th, 2009 02:22pm Alex Gary

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released its annual bank deposit market share data and AMCORE Bank again dominates the Rock River Valley.

AMCORE has been the No. 1 bank locally every year that the FDIC has the information available on the web, which dates back to 1994. In Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties, AMCORE had $2.24 billion in deposits at 16 locations. AMCORE commanded 26.7 percent of the market at the end of June.

Even with all of the negative headlines surrounding AMCORE, which has lost money the past 18 months, its local deposits grew by nearly 4 percent.

There is a new No. 2 in the market. Alpine Bank, which now includes Belvidere National Bank deposits, had $824.3 million at the end of June, a 14.7 percent surge. Alpine and Belvidere National Bank were owned by the same bank holding company and executives there decided to merge the two into one bank to market the bank more effectively.

An interesting side note. The total amount of money deposited at area banks grew from $7.99 billion at the end of June in 2008 to $8.38 billion at the end of June in 2009, a 4.9 percent increase and the largest year-over-year jump since 2006 when the economy was in the middle of the housing bubble.

Marchionne plan for Chrysler coming in November?

Add comment September 28th, 2009 01:04pm Alex Gary

CNBC’s Phil LeBeu wrote last week that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne will unveil his plan to revive Chrysler Group LLC in November.

According to LeBeu, the key will be clearly differentiating the Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep plans. Marchionne plans to make Chrysler more upscale, trying to compete with Lincoln and Cadillac. Marchionne sees Dodge as its mass market brand, while he’s mostly happy with Jeep’s branding.

In terms of models, LeBeu believes Marchionne is going to offer a “flurry” of new models for the C/D segment to replace the Dodge Caliber, Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot, which are assembled in Belvidere.