Economy
Medford's economy is driven primarily by the health care industry.
Medford is the economic center for over 460,000 people located in Southern Oregon and Northern California. The Projected 2008 retail sales in the Greater Medford Area are $7.5 billion dollars. The average is more than the expanded Portland and Eugene markets.
In the past, Medford's economy was fueled by agriculture (pears, peaches, viticulture grapes) and timber products. The largest direct marketer of fruits and food gifts in the United States, Harry and David Operations Corp., is based in Medford. It is the largest employer in Southern Oregon, with 1,700 year round and about 6,700 seasonal employees in the Medford area. Harry and David was founded in 1910 to market the harvest from the orchards of the Rogue Valley.
Benchmark Maps, founded in Medford in 1995, produces detailed atlases and maps in 10 western states. Falcon Northwest, a personal computer manufacturing company, has been operating in Medford since 2002. A film production company, Pacific International Enterprises, has been distributing films from Medford since the 1970s.
Lithia Motors, the 8th largest auto retailer in the U.S., has been headquartered in Medford since 1970. Publicly traded on the NYSE as LAD, Lithia operates nearly 100 dealerships west of the Mississippi River.
As there are no towns of equal or larger size within several hours' drive, Medford is a regional hub for medical services. The two major medical centers in the city, Rogue Valley Medical Center and Providence Medford Medical Center, employ over 2,000 people. As Medford is also a retirement destination, assisted living and senior services have become an important part of the economy.
Medford and the surrounding area is home to the expanding Oregon wine industry that includes a large variety of Bordelaise, Rhone, and Burgundian varietals including merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah, zinfandel, pinot noir, gewürztraminer, riesling, pinot gris, chardonnay, pinot blanc, early muscat, and Gamay Noir. Unlike the rest of Oregon, the region has also enjoyed success with two lesser-known varietals: Tempranillo, the red grape known best as the foundation of Spanish Rioja, and Viognier, a white grape previously found only in isolated parts of the Rhone region.
Read more about this topic: Medford, Oregon
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)