EcoNorthwest says Eugene will get $80M economic impact from IAAF

Last updated on 12/30/2015

Whoops, that’s what the Russian economists said Moscow would get from the 2013 IAAF championships:

8 billion TV viewers? World population is 7 billion.

For Eugene, EcoNorthwest’s prediction is 600% higher – for a $568M “total output contribution” and the equivalent of 2,608 full-year job equivalents. All that from a 10 day-long track meet? [See footnote.]

Let’s generously assume that 1/2 these jobs are construction jobs that really are full-time, full-year, while the rest of the jobs are full-time hotel, restaurant, etc that last for 2 weeks. That would mean the prediction is for 13*1304 = 16,952 short-term customer service type jobs (or the equivalent in overtime for current employees). This is for an event with a max of 30,000 spectators. So the estimate is that this will create more than one full-time job for every two spectators for the duration of the event. That seems high. (And perhaps 1/3 of the spectators will be Eugene residents who won’t use hotels, and who will reduce their spending on other local events, restaurants, etc. to be able to afford the tickets).

And Track Town has apparently got UO to give it the right to shut down UO summer classes for a month. That and the high housing costs will chase off a lot of students, many for the whole summer. Lots of countervailing job and income losses there, all of which are ignored in the ECONorthwest consulting report that Track Town will use to lobby the legislature, here:

For what it’s worth I’m all in favor of bringing this IAAF championship to Eugene – but not at any price.

Footnote: The 2,608 job number is measured in full-year job equivalents. The IMPLAN software breaks these job estimates out by full-time and part-time, but EcoNorthwest does not report that breakout in their draft report. It probably doesn’t matter much, at least according to this reference: http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/technical/econ/data/?cid=nrcs143_009732

“The estimated change in economic activity should be assessed relative to overall economic activity. Results should be reasonable and be able to assist the audience understand the contribution of the conservation expenditures to overall economic activity. IMPLAN defines a “job year” as the amount of labor needed for one year’s work. Job estimates coming directly out of IMPLAN represent both full and part-time jobs. It is possible to convert to full time equivalent jobs using a FTE conversion table from the IMPLAN Web site; typical conversions have run between .90 and .92 FTEs for NRCS analyses.”