A11
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2021
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BRIEFING
Portland’s New Relic
announces layoffs
Software company
New Relic, one of Port-
land’s largest technology
employers, said Tuesday it
will lay off nearly 160 em-
ployees across the com-
pany as revenue growth
continues slowing and
losses accumulate.
The job cuts amount to
approximately 7% of New
Relic’s workforce, based
on its most recent tally
of total employees. The
company attributed the
layoffs to a changing busi-
ness model, as New Relic
moves away from its prior
focus on selling its soft-
ware through a subscrip-
tion. The company said it
will cut nearly 120 jobs in
the U.S. and up to 40 more
internationally.
New Relic’s headquar-
ters are in San Francisco,
but it runs its engineering
operations from a large
office in downtown Port-
land, where it employs
about 600 of its roughly
2,100 workers.
New Relic’s software
helps organizations track
activity on their website to
gauge the performance of
their online products and
services.
Job openings
reached highest
rate on record
The pace of job open-
ings reached the highest
level on record in Feb-
ruary .
The job openings rate
— which is the number
of available jobs as a per-
centage of the employed
and the open jobs, com-
bined — rose to 4.9%, the
highest since the data was
first tracked in December
2000, the Labor Depart-
ment said Tuesday.
The increase reflects a
solid rise in open jobs to
7.4 million, up from 7.1
million in January and
significantly above the
pre-pandemic level of
about 7 million. Total hires
rose to 5.7 million, though
that is below the figure in
February 2020, just before
the coronavirus intensified.
The data come from
the Job Openings and
Labor Turnover survey, or
JOLTS, which reports the
number of job listings, to-
tal hiring, and layoffs and
quits. The hiring figures
represent a gross figure,
while the monthly jobs re-
port provides a net num-
ber of jobs gained or lost.
On Friday, the govern-
ment said a net 916,000
jobs were added .
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOR CENTRAL OREGON
St. Charles maintains top employer status
BY SUZANNE ROIG
The Bulletin
St. Charles Health System led
the pack of Central Oregon’s
top employers, a position it’s
held for the past two decades,
according to the Economic De-
velopment for Central Oregon
survey.
Economic Development for
Central Oregon ranks the top
employers in the region each
year. The largest employers in
2021: St. Charles with 4,626
employees regionwide; Bright
Wood Corp. with 1,093 em-
ployees regionwide; Sunriver
Resort with 1,000; and Les
Schwab Tire Centers region-
wide and its headquarters with
890 employees.
“As the Central Oregon
region grows, so grows the
demand for health care ser-
vices and that translates into
jobs,” said Jenn Welander, St.
Charles’s chief financial officer.
“Health care is a labor-intensive
business, with our caregivers’
salaries accounting for about
60% of our operating costs.”
The semi-isolation of Central
Oregon sets up the region for
just one hospital system, said
Roger Lee, Economic Develop-
ment for Central Oregon CEO.
St. Charles has four hospitals
each located in Bend, Red-
mond, Prineville and Madras.
The number of employees
in Central Oregon has been
tracked for the past 20 years.
It’s used to paint an economic
picture to lure new business to
the area.
“Similarly sized regions adja-
cent to other metros may have
multiple hospital systems serv-
ing a broader region, which has
the effect of splitting that em-
ployment up over multiple em-
ployers so perhaps they don’t
end up being at the No. 1 spot,
but still very much being high
on the list,” Lee said.
Except for the No. 1 and No.
2 places, the list shows a lot of
movement up and down. For
example, Les Schwab was the
third-largest employer in 2019.
And Lonza, the pharmaceuti-
cal research company formerly
known as Bend Research, went
from No. 14 in 2019 to the 10th
largest employer in Central Or-
egon.
The list shows that many
companies lost employees over
the past year due to shutdowns
from efforts to contain the
COVID-19 pandemic.
One example is Rosendin
Electric in Redmond, it went
from the eighth largest em-
ployer in 2019 to the 16th.
As the risk of spreading
COVID-19 decreased, more
businesses were able to open
and add employees in Central
Oregon, according to Damon
Runberg, Oregon Employment
Department regional econo-
mist’s February employment
report. Around 7 out of every
10 jobs lost during the initial
COVID-19 shock were added
back across the region in Feb-
ruary, Runberg reported.
Reporter: 541-633-2117,
sroig@bendbulletin.com
Pandemic movers
Thousands flock to
Dallas-Fort Worth
BY STEVE BROWN
The Dallas Morning News
D
uring the pandemic there’s been
lots of chatter about folks moving to
Texas from other states.
But so far there’ve been few hard
numbers on the immigrant totals.
Now a new study from commercial real es-
tate giant CBRE confirms the thousands of
people heading to Dallas-Fort Worth last year
and where they came from.
No surprise, the largest number of new
transplants came from California.
In 2020, more than 16,000 people moved
to North Texas from California, according to
CBRE’s study of post office change of address
information. California moves to Dallas-Fort
Worth were up more than 19% last year from
2019 totals.
Relocations from New York had an even
bigger 2020 gain, rising more than 22% last
year with more than 4,500 moves.
Other states that shifted thousands of work-
ers to the Dallas-Fort Worth area include Flor-
ida and Illinois.
“Doesn’t surprise me the California ones,”
said Dr. Luis Torres, an economist with the
Texas Real Estate Research Center. “New York
State is probably starting from a lower base.
In 2019, most of the Texas moves came from
California and Florida, Torres said.
“We are actually trying to get a better grasp
on migration numbers — we are looking into
possible data sets,” he said.
CBRE’s new study, COVID-19 Impact on
Resident Migration Patterns, took a deep dive
into relocation in markets across the U.S.
“As the COVID-19 crisis escalated and so-
cial distancing restrictions took hold, the out-
flow of people from dense, high-cost urban
metros accelerated in 2020,” the study found.
“Sun Belt metros and those in interior parts of
the county either gained new residents or had
fewer people leave relative to 2019.
“The biggest cohort of this urban outflow is
affluent young adults who are well-educated,
childless and can work remotely.”
More than a half million
people a year are
moving to Texas, many
from California, Florida,
Louisiana and Illinois.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
PG&E charged
in 2019 wildfire
A California prosecutor
filed 33 criminal charges
Tuesday against troubled
Pacific Gas & Electric for a
2019 wind-driven wildfire
officials blamed on the
utility, accusing it of injur-
ing six firefighters and en-
dangering public health
with smoke and ash.
The company denied
that it committed any
crimes even as it accepted
that its transmission line
sparked the blaze.
The Sonoma County
district attorney charged
the utility with five fel-
ony and 28 misdemeanor
counts in the October
2019 Kincade Fire north
of San Francisco. The
blaze burned more than
120 square miles and de-
stroyed 374 buildings.
The 33 charges include
recklessly causing a fire
that seriously injured six
firefighters, named only as
John Does #1-#6.
Fire officials said a PG&E
transmission line sparked
the fire, which destroyed
hundreds of homes and
caused nearly 100,000
people to flee.
— Bulletin wire reports
Oregon House passes new
foreclosure moratorium
BY SARA CLINE
The Associated Press/Report for
America
PORTLAND — A mea-
sure that would reinstate and
extend Oregon’s moratorium
on foreclosures until Sept. 1
during the COVID-19 pan-
demic on Tuesday passed the
state’s House of Representa-
tives.
Unlike the bill that was
passed by lawmakers in June,
the new legislation would not
protect commercial property
owners — those who own
more than five properties or
properties with more than
four housing units. The mor-
atorium would be retroac-
tive back to Dec. 3 and could
be extended until the end of
2021 by the governor.
The latest bill, which
passed in the House 38-21,
moves to the state Senate.
“I assure you that Orego-
nians need this sort of pro-
tection. Without it, I fear that
we face even more economic
distress,” said Rep. Paul
Holvey, a Democrat repre-
senting Eugene. “More Ore-
gonians will become home-
less if this bill does not pass.”
In March, more than 6%
— or more than 65,000 Or-
egon homeowners — said
they were not caught up on
their mortgage payments,
based on the U.S. Census Bu-
reau’s most recent Household
Pulse Survey.
In December, during a
special legislative session,
lawmakers extended Ore-
gon’s eviction moratorium
through June 30, 2021, and
established $200 million in
relief for landlords and ten-
ants. However, the foreclo-
sure moratorium was not
extended — leaving some
homeowners concerned
about how they would make
their payments.
However, many homeown-
ers are currently protected
from foreclosures by federal
moratoriums, and the coro-
navirus relief act provided
protections for homeowners
with a federally backed loan.
But a report from the Na-
tional Housing Law Proj-
ect states that about 30% of
single-family mortgages, or
roughly 14.5 million loans
nationwide, are not backed
or owned by a federal agency
and not covered by the fed-
eral moratorium.
Fuel prices this summer
to be highest since 2018
BY ANDRES GUERRA LUZ
Bloomberg
Drivers eager to get back on
the road more than a year into
the pandemic could face the
highest summer gasoline prices
since 2018, according to a U.S.
government report.
Prices at the pump will aver-
age $2.78 a gallon from April
to September in the U.S., more
than 30% higher than last sum-
mer. While COVID-19 will
continue to affect petroleum
markets this summer, more
vaccinations combined with
U.S. fiscal stimulus will sup-
port the economic recovery
and drive demand growth, the
Energy Information Adminis-
tration said in its annual Sum-
mer Fuels Outlook report on
Tuesday.
“The higher price in 2021
results from our forecasts of
higher crude oil prices this
summer and greater gasoline
demand as the effects of the
COVID-19 pandemic continue
to subside and travel increases,”
said the agency’s acting Admin-
istrator Steve Nalley. “We fore-
cast 15% more highway travel
this summer as a result of rising
employment, easing regional
restrictions designed to slow
the pandemic, and increasing
overall economic activity as
vaccination rates increase.”
The fuel demand recovery
in the world’s largest oil con-
sumer will be closely watched
to see if a vaccine rollout that’s
been gathering momentum
will be enough to lure travelers
out in force. While more than
100 million Americans have
gotten at least one dose, vaccine
campaigns in other parts of
the world such as Europe have
been shakier, threatening to
limit a rebound in global travel.