Sandpoint, which counts on good snow years at Schweitzer Mountain Resorts ski area to help drive its economy, is receiving a blizzard of business from recreation-home buyers after Sunset magazine covered the Idaho city in a glistening story in in

Just as the Inland Northwest economy has shown signs of getting off the ground again, soaring building-materials prices threaten to clip its wings.Steel prices have risen sharply in recent months, and Spokane-area companies that do business in

Online enrollment for benefits continues to be the No. 1 choice for U.S. employees, with 77percent using the Internet to enroll this year, according to research conducted by Hewitt Associates, the big human resources outsourcing and consulting an

The Spokane office of Marsh might seem like a remote outpost for a multibillion-dollar-a-year parent company that claims to be the worlds leading insurance and risk-management services provider.Its no slouch, though, within the huge It was

Employers here say spiraling health-insurance premiums and other benefit-related labor costs are forcing them to trim pay raises and bonuses for their workers.Benefit-cost increases are outpacing wage increases by a wide margin, with premiums 5

Agricultural workers who perform thinningremoving young buds from orchard trees to increase the size of the remaining fruitface a greater likelihood of pesticide exposure than other farm workers, according to new findings from Fred Hutchinson a

The Washington state Department of Ecology plans to revise its rules governing what are called injection wells, including about 10,000 of themmostly storm-water dry wellsin the Spokane metropolitan area.The rule changes still are in the so

In the architectural and engineering industries, business can fluctuate like a roller coaster ride, with projects peaking during the summer and plummeting during the winter. Womer & Associates Inc., of Spokane, hopes to rise above that trend to

Mark Barnes, owner and president of Spokane-based National Furniture Store Inc., has sold his companys warehouse at 1004 N. Calispel to the Inland Northwest Blood Center.Barnes says he sold the 7,800-square-foot warehouse with a mezzanine and

Montvale Hotel LLC, a company controlled by Spokane developer Rob Brewster Jr., is moving forward with plans to renovate part of the Montvale Block building downtown into a 36-room hotel.The city of Spokane issued a building permit for the this