A9
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2021
q
DOW
33,981.57 -61.92
BRIEFING
Vancouver startup
raises $20 million
A former executive
at mobile payments
company Square has
launched a financial tech-
nology startup in Vancou-
ver, Washington.
The business, Embed-
ded Financial Technolo-
gies, is building software
to add stock-trading
capabilities into mobile
apps. The company said
Monday it has raised $20
million and CEO Michael
Giles told The Wall Street
Journal that investors val-
ued the business at $80
million in February.
Before starting Em-
bedded, Giles had been
CEO of Square subsidiary
Cash App Investing. That
business emerged from
another company Giles
ran, Third Party Technolo-
gies, which also provided
online investing features
for financial technology
firms. Third Party, too,
was based in the Portland
area.
It wasn’t clear how
many people Embedded
employs and Giles didn’t
immediately respond to a
phone message seeking
comment. In an online
posting, he said his back-
ers include Propel Ven-
ture Partners, Bain Capital
Ventures and startup in-
cubator Y Combinator.
Previously owned
homes now pricier
than new ones
For the first time in
more than 15 years, it’s
cheaper to buy a new
house than a previously
owned dwelling.
The premium for
newly built homes van-
ished last month as low
supply fueled price in-
creases in the broader
market and erased the
discount traditionally as-
sociated with older prop-
erties.
The median sales price
of a previously owned
single-family home rose
to $334,500 in March,
the latest National Asso-
ciation of Realtors data
show. Meanwhile, new
properties sold for a me-
dian $330,800, according
to a government report,
marking a reversal in the
differential for the first
time since June 2005. In
Bend, the median price
for a single-family home
reached $590,000 in
March, according to the
Beacon Appraisal Group
in Redmond. .
p
bendbulletin.com/business
p
n
Feds say Oregon company is at fault for 2019 Oregon
crash that killed three migrant workers
jobs lost
skewed
toward
low-wage
NASDAQ
14,138.78 +121.97
S&P 500
4,187.62 +7.45
BY JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
A federal investigation into
a 2019 van crash that killed
three migrant farm workers in
Salem found that the Oregon
labor contractor who hired
the workers violated multi-
ple federal laws by failing to
ensure the workers had safe
transportation to and from
work.
q
30-YR T-BOND
2.24% -.01
The U.S. Department of
Labor announced Monday
that Salem-based JMG La-
bor Contractor, run by Jose
Mota Gonzales, permitted
the transportation of work-
ers without required authori-
zation, failed to provide safe
transportation, failed to en-
sure the vehicle’s driver had
a valid driver’s license and
proper insurance and didn’t
q
CRUDE OIL
$61.91 -.23
p
register the driver as an em-
ployee. The department also
said Mota failed to maintain
active registration as a farm
labor contractor.
JMG Labor Contractor has
already paid $32,500 in penal-
ties through a settlement with
the federal government.
“The loss of three lives
and the serious injuries suf-
fered by other workers in
p
GOLD
$1,779.20 +2.20
SILVER
$26.21 +.13
this case is tragic and dev-
astating for the workers and
their grieving families,” Car-
rie Aguilar, district director
for the department’s wage
and hour division, said in
a statement. “Laws exist to
try to prevent such terrible
situations, and the trauma
they inflict on an entire
community.”
See Crash / A10
T URF WAR
In another battle around technology, licensed
surveyors are objecting to maps that combine
drone images with property lines
BY BRYAN ANDERSON
The Associated Press/Report for America
RALEIGH, N.C. —
W
hen Michael Jones started a side
hustle shooting drone photos and
videos for Realtors, his clients wanted more:
images with property lines on them, to better
understand where their fences should be.
It seemed like a good use of emerging
technology that met an obvious consumer
demand, and Jones was careful to add a
disclaimer: His maps weren’t meant to
replace the proper surveys that are
often needed for such things as
mortgages, title insurance and land use
applications.
But after two years of steady business, Jones
was slapped by the state of North Carolina in
2018 with an order that grounded his drone.
The Board of Examiners for Engineers and
Surveyors said he faced criminal prosecution
for surveying without a license.
Eager to deploy a technology that’s
disrupting the staid practice of surveying
nationwide, Jones sued last month, accusing
the board of violating his First
Amendment rights.
See Drone / A10
Kanye West shoes
fetch record $1.8M
A pair of prototype Ni-
kes worn by Kanye West
during his performances
of “Hey Mama” and
“Stronger” at the Grammy
Awards in 2008 has shat-
tered the record for a pair
of sneakers ever sold.
Sotheby’s announced
Monday that West’s so-
called “Grammy Worn”
Nike Air Yeezy 1 fetched
$1.8 million in a private
sale. It was acquired by
RARES, a sneaker invest-
ment marketplace.
The sale marks the
highest publicly recorded
price for a sneaker sale
and the first pair of sneak-
ers to top $1 million. So-
theby’s brokered the pri-
vate sale.
The size 12 shoes de-
signed by West and Mark
Smith are made of soft
black leather with perfo-
rated detailing through-
out the upper, and the
heel overlay is branded
with a tonal Swoosh. The
design features the iconic
Yeezy forefoot strap and
signature ‘Y’ medallion
lace locks in bright pink.
— Bulletin wire reports
Michael Jones operates his drone April 2 in
Goldsboro, North Carolina. When Jones started
shooting drone photos and videos for Realtors,
his clients wanted more: images with prop-
erty lines on them. However, after two years of
steady business, the state of North Carolina is-
sued an order that grounded his drone.
Gerry Broome/AP
EURO
$1.2092 ...
Meanwhile, jobs
above $64K expanded
through pandemic
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
The pandemic recession was
the steepest, deepest economic
collapse in Oregon history.
But not for everyone.
More than 1 in 10 Oregon
jobs paying below $35,000 a
year disappeared in the early
weeks of the pandemic, ac-
cording to a new report by Josh
Lehner, with the state’s Office
of Economic Analysis. Ore-
gon’s jobless rate soared to an
all-time high of 13.2%.
During the same period,
though, Oregon added jobs pay-
ing more than $64,000 a year.
The data underscores the no-
toriously inequitable nature of
the pandemic recession. Front-
line workers in restaurants,
bars, hotels, gyms, boutiques
and many other fields were
thrown out of work when the
state ordered them shut down .
Nearly 20% of jobs in food
preparation and “personal care ”
had vanished by the time the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
collected these numbers in May.
Those who could do their
jobs from home, though, were
often insulated from those ef-
fects . Business, finance and le-
gal work expanded by nearly
5% — scientific jobs were up
more than 10%.
As Lehner notes in his anal-
ysis, that’s very different from
the recession that followed
the dot-com bust at the turn
of the century, or the Great
Recession. Middle-wage jobs
suffered the most in those two
downturns, especially in 2007.
While those who lost their
jobs last year were frequently
the ones who could least afford
to go without an income, fed-
eral relief payments blunted
the impact . The federal gov-
ernment continues to pay a
$300 weekly unemployment
bonus and has extended jobless
payments for a year or more,
far beyond the usual limit.
Oregon has paid more than
$8.6 billion in jobless bene-
fits, most of it federal money,
during the pandemic.
There’s cause for optimism
that the nature of the 2020 job
losses may accelerate the recov-
ery in 2021. The jobs that van-
ished early in the pandemic may
be among the fastest to return.
“Our office does expect a
much faster and more com-
plete economic recovery ” Leh-
ner wrote. “This means there is
likely to be relatively little eco-
nomic scarring and permanent
damage.”
Apple privacy update arrives after 7-month delay
BY MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Associated Press
Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post
The Shake Shack app, like all
iPhone apps, now must seek your
permission to track your phone
for marketing purposes.
SAN RAMON, Calif. — Ap-
ple is following through on its
pledge to crack down on Face-
book and other snoopy apps
that secretly shadow people on
their iPhones in order to target
more advertising at users.
The new privacy feature,
dubbed “App Tracking Trans-
parency,” rolled out Monday as
part of an update to the operat-
ing system powering the iPhone
and iPad. The anti-tracking
shield included in iOS 14.5 ar-
rives after a seven-month delay
during which Apple and Face-
book attacked each other’s busi-
ness models and motives for
decisions that affect billions of
people around the world.
“What this feud demonstrates
more than anything is that Face-
book and Apple have tremen-
dous gatekeeping powers over
the market,” said Elizabeth Re-
nieris, founding director of the
Technology Ethics Lab at the
University of Notre Dame.
Apple says it is just looking
out for the best interests of the
more than 1 billion people cur-
rently using iPhones.
“Now is a good time to
bring this out, both because
of because of the increasing
amount of data they have on
their devices, and their sensi-
tivity (about the privacy risks)
is increasing, too,” said Erik
Neuenschwander, Apple’s chief
privacy engineer .
In its attacks on Apple’s anti-
tracking controls, Facebook
blasted the move as an abuse of
power designed to force more
apps to charge for their ser-
vices instead of relying on ads.
Apple takes a 15% to 30% cut
on most payments processed
through an iPhone app.
Online tracking has long
helped Facebook and thou-
sands of other apps accumulate
information about their user’s
interests and habits so they
can show customized ads. Al-
though Facebook executives
initially acknowledged Apple’s
changes would probably reduce
its revenue by billions of dollars
annually, the social networking
company has framed most of
its public criticism as a defense
of small businesses that rely on
online ads to stay alive.
See Privacy / A10