SolarWorld Industries, whose parent company is based in Bonn, Germany, is cutting 63 positions from its Vancouver, WA facility, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department. SolarWorld says the move is not a reduction in total staff, but rather a transfer of operations to its new manufacturing plant in Hillsboro, OR (which Xconomy reported on here).

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2009 is barely a week old, and already the Washington and Oregon tech industries have seen massive new layoffs in the struggling economy. A quick recap of the latest bloodletting (see the updated Xconomy Seattle layoff litany here):

—Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A) cut 120 jobs at its plant in Liberty Lake, WA. The Santa Clara, CA-based maker of instruments for electronics and life sciences companies has nearly 20,000 employees worldwide. The layoffs are effective January 30.

—Seattle-based software firm Attachmate has laid off 120 employees, or 10 percent of its staff, as reported by TechFlash. It is not clear yet how many jobs are being cut in Seattle. Attachmate is a Seattle-area icon that helps businesses manage and deliver IT services. It has some 65,000 customers, according to its website.

—Intermec (NYSE: IN), an Everett, WA-based maker of technologies for radio frequency identification and mobile computing, has laid off 7 percent of its global workforce, or about 150 people. The cuts are mostly in sales, general, and administrative areas.

—ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ: ONNN), which operates a 500-person chip manufacturing plant in Gresham, OR, is laying off 10 percent of its worldwide staff, or about 1,500 jobs. The Phoenix, AZ-based company is reportedly closing its Oregon plant for at least four weeks in the first half of this year.

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Wilsonville, OR-based InFocus (NASDAQ: INFS), a maker of digital projectors, announced today it is reducing its global workforce by 30 percent, as part of a company restructuring that will span all of 2009. The staff cuts will be effective next month. InFocus president and CEO Bob O’Malley cited the economic downturn and reduced demand for projectors as reasons for the restructuring. The company says it is spending around $1.3 million on severance payments and some $4 million to vacate facility space in Wilsonville. No word yet on exactly how many jobs will be cut.

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In terms of eco-friendliness, the Pacific Northwest and New England—Xconomy’s two homes—are both sitting pretty. In terms of education, however, one of them is not.

That’s according to the 2008 Business Facilities rankings report, released this week. The annual survey, which compares different business environments around the country, ranks cities and states based on everything from air pollution and renewable energy incentives to K-12 spending and graduation rates. The report covers a wide range of topics, but I want to highlight two lists that caught my eye.

First, the good news. Washington, Oregon, and five New England states made the list of top 20 greenest states, with Oregon and Massachusetts leading the way:

1. Oregon
2. Massachusetts
3. Colorado
4. Washington
5. California
6. Connecticut
7. Minnesota
8. Arizona
9. Vermont
10. New York
11. Maryland
12. Hawaii
13. New Mexico
14. Rhode Island
15. Wisconsin
16. New Hampshire
17. Texas
18. Iowa
19. New Jersey
20. Florida

That’s based on pollution levels, financial incentives and policies for energy efficiency and renewable energy, number of hazardous waste sites, percentage of people who use public transit, and a couple of other metrics.

The “greenest” rankings by city are a little less meaningful, as they are based solely on data from the U.S. Green Building Council—basically a measure of the number of “green” buildings in town. Nevertheless, Seattle tied for first place with Chicago. Portland, OR, was next, and Boston and Cambridge, MA, placed 7th and 9th, respectively.

Now for the bad (or at least mixed) news. Although Seattle and Portland ranked #1 and #4 in …Next Page »

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We’re Number Four. That is, in terms of concentration of technology-based employment and R&D activity in the state, Washington ranks fourth in the nation (after Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia), largely on the strength of its aerospace and software publishing industries. The concentration is defined as the number of jobs in a given sector relative to all jobs.

This stat, and many others, come courtesy of the Technology Alliance, a statewide organization of tech and business leaders based in Seattle. Yesterday the organization released the final version of its 51-page “economic impact” report—its first since 2005 and fifth overall documenting the impact of the tech industry on the state’s economy. The report was prepared by William Beyers of the Department of Geography at the University of Washington.

Before we get to the rest of the stats, I found it interesting how the survey defined the “tech industry” in the first place. For a sector to be considered high-tech, at least 14.6 percent of its workforce had to be engaged in R&D occupations—double the percentage for the state’s overall workforce.

This seems arbitrary to me (though well-defined), and it raises the question of what “tech” even means anymore. It’s getting harder to draw the line, as almost every business uses technologies such as computers and the Internet to develop or push its products. But the survey’s focus on R&D speaks to the importance of driving the next generation of technologies, and the criterion leads to such familiar tech sectors as the following (with Washington-state workforce size in 2007):

—Aerospace (78,667 employees)
—Software publishing and computer systems design (75,638)
—Business services (82,519)
—Computer and electrical equipment manufacturing (26,862)
—Internet publishers, service providers, and wireless (19,128)
—Scientific R&D (18,765)

A few more highlights, based on the 2007 stats:

—There were a total of 343,371 tech jobs, representing 11.8 percent of all employment in the state.

—The income, measured in salary and benefits, per job in technology industries averaged $117,691, as compared to the state average of $54,097.

—The tech industry generated $112.6 billion in sales, and 80 percent of those sales came from out of state (versus 40 percent of sales from all businesses).

—Taking into account “indirect impacts,” such as the purchases of goods and services related to the industry, the tech sector helped support some 40 percent of all jobs in the state.

—In terms of “technology-intensive” industries, defined as those in which more than 30 percent of employment is in R&D (e.g., aerospace and software here), Washington ranked second in the nation after Virginia. Just goes to show how arbitrary rankings can be.

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