WHAT HAPPENED TO MONTANA'S FORESTRY JOBS? The Cause of Wood Products Employment Declines in the State.

AuthorMorgan, Todd

Montana's forest industry has seen a dramatic change in employment and wages since its peak in the late 1980s to the lows of today. Forest industry employment has dropped nearly 39 percent (4,600 jobs) and so have salaries and benefits paid to its remaining workers.

The debate surrounding this decline has centered on changing technology and an increase in productivity For instance, we now have equipment that can chop down trees, remove the branches and load them on a truck all in one swift move, so we don't need as many loggers in the woods to harvest the same amount of timber.

In January 2018, Mark Haggerty of Headwaters Economics testified before a joint subcommittee on Montana's changing economy and tax structure. When asked to describe what's changing, Haggerty noted that innovation in the wood products industry was to blame for declines in employment and income.

But the overwhelming conclusion from decades of data is that a diminishing timber harvest, or log supply, in the state is the leading cause. Simply put, we are not harvesting as much wood in Montana as we once did. In examining the data, the Forest Industry Research Program at the University of Montana found this to be the major reason for declining employment and labor income over the past 35 years.

Timber Harvest and Forest Industry Trends

Timber is harvested in Montana from both public and private lands, and the largest declines have been on U.S. Forest Service lands (Figure 1). In the 1990s, there was a 70 to 80 percent reduction in wood harvesting. Private harvests began to decline in the late 1990s as well, reaching a trough in 2009. Since then, timber harvests have stabilized at levels not seen since the 1940s. In all, the average Montana timber harvest since 2011 is one-third of what it was during the 1980s.

Because of this situation, Montana's lumber production has seen the same overall trend, declining substantially since the late 1980s (Figure 2).

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. experienced a period of high lumber prices and record levels of new home construction and lumber consumption, but Montana's lumber production continued to fall. Even at the peak of U.S. home building in 2005, with more than 2 million new home starts, Montana's lumber production was only slightly above its 1982 recession low. And since the Great Recession, lumber production has remained relatively flat despite increasing lumber prices. Montana's lumber production in 2016 was...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT