A7
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2021
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DOW
34,548.53 +318.19
BRIEFING
Jobless claims fall
to a pandemic low
The number of Amer-
icans seeking unemploy-
ment aid fell last week to
498,000, the lowest point
since the viral pandemic
struck 14 months ago and
a sign of the job market’s
growing strength as busi-
nesses reopen and con-
sumers step up spending.
Thursday’s report from
the Labor Department
showed that applications
declined 92,000 from a re-
vised 590,000 a week ear-
lier. The number of weekly
jobless claims — a rough
measure of the pace of
layoffs — has declined
significantly from a peak
of 900,000 in January as
employers have ramped
up hiring.
At the same time, the
pace of applications is still
well above the roughly
230,000 level that pre-
vailed before the viral
outbreak tore through
the economy in March of
last year.
The turnaround has
led many businesses to
complain that they can’t
find enough workers .
Some other employers are
raising pay to attract ap-
plicants.
U.S. withdraws
Trump-era rule
The Labor Department
is rescinding a rule that
made it harder for gig and
contract workers to argue
they were entitled to min-
imum wage and overtime
protections, part of a push
to undo Trump-era deci-
sions that favored busi-
nesses and employers.
The withdrawal of the
“Independent Contractor”
rule, which limited the
ability of workers to argue
that they were misclassi-
fied as contractors when
they should have been
employees, was expected
to become effective on
Thursday.
Companies have in-
creased the use of con-
tractors in recent decades
in part to lower labor
costs. Employees are enti-
tled to a range of benefits
not afforded to contrac-
tors, including a minimum
wage and overtime pay.
Labor advocates say
that many of these work-
ers are misclassified, and
should be counted as
employees. The Labor De-
partment has the power
to investigate these cases
and rectify violations
when they are found.
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Intel says it will build more Oregon factories
BY MIKE ROGOWAY
The Oregonian
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, vis-
iting the company’s Hillsboro
factories Wednesday, said the
company isn’t done expanding
in Oregon and expects to add
to its local manufacturing foot-
print again within the next few
years.
That’s the first time Intel has
indicated that it plans to con-
tinue building in Oregon after
it wraps up construction of a $3
billion expansion to its D1X re-
search factory, which is nearing
completion in Hillsboro.
Intel develops each new gen-
eration of microprocessor in its
Oregon factories, then precisely
duplicates its manufacturing
process at sites in Arizona, Ire-
land and Israel.
“In another three or four
years, I anticipate we’ll have an-
other expansion here that we’ll
then replicate across the man-
ufacturing network,” Gelsinger
said in an interview Wednesday
with The Oregonian.
Before Gelsinger’s hiring in
January, Intel had been con-
templating outsourcing its ad-
vanced manufacturing, which
would have permanently di-
minished Oregon’s role as the
heart of Intel’s research.
Now, with Gelsinger leading
a global building boom for the
company, Intel is going in the
opposite direction — planning
new factories around the globe.
Gelsinger is also expanding into
contract manufacturing, offer-
ing up Intel factories to build
chips for other companies.
On Wednesday, Gelsinger
said Oregon will get a share of
that growth, eventually, and
the new jobs and billions of
dollars in investment that go
along with it. Intel said it still
has room to build in Hillsboro;
planning documents submit-
ted to the city in past years had
shown no factory expansion be-
yond its current footprint.
“This is the hub of our semi-
conductor research,” Gelsinger
said Wednesday. “It’ll always
be that.”
In the four months since Intel
announced Gelsinger’s hiring,
he has embarked on an un-
precedented spending spree to
expand the company’s factory
network after a string of tech-
nological failures. And he has
campaigned aggressively for
government incentives for the
chip industry in Europe and the
U.S. to reduce reliance on chip
factories in Taiwan and South
Korea.
—Bulletin wire reports
See Intel / A8
FLOWER GROWERS SCRAMBLE
TO MEET HUGE DEMAND
W
BY SIERRA DAWN MCCLAIN
Capital Press
estern U.S. flower growers say
demand this spring has reached
“exponentially higher” levels.
A few days before Mother’s
Day, growers across California and Oregon
said they were overwhelmed with orders. With
COVID restrictions loosening, many antici-
pate big sales for events this summer.
“There’s definitely an uptick in demand for
fresh flowers this year,” said Steve Dionne, ex-
ecutive director of the California Association of
Flower Growers and Shippers, or CalFlowers.
Industry leaders say the American consum-
er’s relationship with flowers has also changed.
The past year, more shoppers have bought
flowers for “ordinary days” rather than just for
special occasions — a trend that’s continuing.
But flower farmers continue to wrestle with
COVID-related challenges, including labor
shortages, transportation disruptions and
over-consolidation of the industry that will
likely result in a flower shortage this year.
This spring stands in bold contrast to spring
of 2020, which Dionne described as “a time of
terror through the industry.”
During 2020’s toughest months, the domes-
tic flower industry underwent major consoli-
dation. Many florists, wholesalers and growers
went out of business. Some farmers switched
flower acreage to other crops.
The industry made a U-turn during the
summer as Americans bought more flowers to
adorn their homes and give to friends.
Flower demand in 2021, growers say, is “ex-
ponentially higher.”
In the lead-up to Mother’s Day, marketers
and florists say they’re seeing record sales.
Julie Ortiz, a second-generation flower
farmer and sales manager at California com-
pany Joseph and Sons Inc., said she’s “fortunate
and blessed” customers have recently shown
“nonstop interest” in cut flowers.
See Flowers / A8
An employee at
Joseph and Sons
Inc. carries flowers.
Productivity at
solid 5.4% rate
U.S. productivity posted
a sharp rebound between
January and March af-
ter falling in the previous
quarter. Labor costs de-
clined slightly.
Productivity increased
at an annual rate of 5.4%
in the first quarter, recov-
ering from a 3.8% rate of
decline in the fourth quar-
ter of last year, the Labor
Department reported
Thursday. Labor costs fell
at a 0.3% rate in the first
quarter following a 5.6%
jump in the fourth.
It was the biggest
quarterly rise in produc-
tivity since an 11.2% surge
in the second quarter
of last year. That period
was skewed because it
showed how the tremen-
dous speed at which mil-
lions of jobs evaporated
during the pandemic out-
paced even the output of
those workers.
Productivity is the
amount of output per
hour of work. The first
quarter gain had been
expected given that the
gross domestic product,
the country’s total output
of goods and services, had
risen by a robust 6.4% rate
in the first quarter.
EURO
$1.2056 +.0057
Courtesy of California
Cut Flower Commission
EU NATIONS
OREGON LEGISLATURE
Mealworms on the menu?
State wants to delay
paid family, medical
leave program 1 year
European Union OKs beetle larvae on the market as a ‘novel food.’
The Associated Press
BRUSSELS — Dried yellow
mealworms could soon be hit-
ting supermarket shelves and
restaurants across Europe.
The European Union’s 27
nations gave the greenlight
Tuesday to a proposal to put
the Tenebrio molitor beetle lar-
vae on the market as a “novel
food.”
The move came after the
EU’s food safety agency pub-
lished a scientific opinion this
year that concluded worms
were safe to eat. Researchers
said the worms, either eaten
whole or in powdered form,
are a protein-rich snack or an
ingredient for other foods.
Allergic reactions may occur
for people with pre-existing al-
lergies to crustaceans and dust
mites, the Commission said.
Insects as food represent a
BY JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
Virginia Mayo/AP file
Microbar food truck owner Bart Smit holds a container of yellow meal-
worms during a food truck festival in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2014.
very small market but EU of-
ficials said breeding them for
food could have environmental
benefits. The U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization calls
insects “a healthy and highly
nutritious food source with a
high content of fat, protein, vi-
tamins, fibers and minerals.”
Following Tuesday’s ap-
proval by EU states, a EU regu-
lation authorizing dried yellow
mealworms as a food will be
adopted in the coming weeks.
Oregon says it won’t be
ready to start providing paid
family and medical leave
benefits by a January 2023
deadline and has asked law-
makers to delay the rollout
of the state’s long-anticipated
program.
A bill introduced in the
Oregon House on Tuesday
on behalf of the Oregon Em-
ployment Department would
give the state agency until
September 2022 to adopt
rules to establish the program
and would defer the date
when employers must begin
paying into the program un-
til January 2023 — delaying
both deadlines by a full year.
If the bill is adopted, Ore-
gon workers would not start
seeing benefits through the
new program until Septem-
ber 2023, eight months after
the program is currently sup-
posed to go into effect.
Both advocates of the leg-
islation and the employment
department said the corona-
virus pandemic has laid bare
the vital need for paid family
and medical leave.
However, Patty Jo Angelini,
a spokesperson for the em-
ployment department, said
the timeline lawmakers set
for the rollout of the program
was always ambitious and
that the agency was forced
to shift its focus away from
the program due to the pan-
demic.
See Paid leave / A8