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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (June 4, 2021)
A7 B USINESS THE BULLETIN • FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2021 q DOW 34,577.04 -23.34 BRIEFING U.S. jobless claims drop to 385,000 The number of Amer- icans seeking unemploy- ment benefits fell last week for a fifth straight week to a new pandemic low, the latest evidence that the U.S. job market is regaining its health as the economy further re- opens. The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims dropped to 385,000, down 20,000 from the week before. The number of weekly applications for unem- ployment aid, which gen- erally reflects the pace of layoffs, has fallen steadily all year, though it remains high by historical stan- dards. The decline in appli- cations reflects a swift rebound in economic growth and the job mar- ket’s steady recovery from the coronavirus reces- sion. . Employers have added 1.8 million jobs this year — an average of more than 450,000 a month. The economy remains down 8.2 million jobs from its level in February 2020, just before the virus tore through the econ- omy. q bendbulletin.com/business NASDAQ 13,614.51 -141.82 q p S&P 500 4,192.85 -15.27 30-YR T-BOND 2.29% +.01 q CRUDE OIL $68.81 -.02 q GOLD $1,871.20 -36.30 q SILVER $27.46 -.73 U.S. service sector growth surges Growth in the services sector, where most Amer- icans work, hit an all-time high in May as people flocked to bars, restau- rants and other venues across the country that now have fewer or no pandemic-related capac- ity restrictions. The Institute for Sup- ply Management said Thursday that its monthly survey of service indus- tries jumped to a reading of 64, topping the previ- ous high of 63.7 in March. April’s reading of 62.7 was also considered strong, as any reading above 50 indicates the sector is ex- panding. It’s the 12th straight month of expansion in the services sector following a two-month contraction in April and May of last year when businesses were forced to shut down during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. — Bulletin wire reports EURO $1.2126 -.0086 RADIATION TREATMENT Drugs show promise for killing cancer cells BY CARLA K. JOHNSON The Associated Press Doctors are reporting improved sur- vival in men with advanced prostate cancer from an experimental drug that delivers radiation directly to tumor cells. Few such drugs are approved , but the approach may become a new way to treat patients with other hard-to-reach or inoperable cancers. The study tested an emerging class of medicine called radiopharmaceuticals, “You can treat tumors that you cannot see. Anywhere the drug can go, the drug can reach tumor cells.” — Dr. Frank Lin, who had no role in the study but heads a division at the National Cancer Institute that helps develop such medicine drugs that deliver radiation directly to cancer cells. The drug in this case is a molecule that contains two parts: a tracker and a cancer-killing payload. Trillions of these molecules hunt down cancer cells, latching onto protein receptors on the cell membrane. The payload emits radiation, which hits the tumor cells within its range. “You can treat tumors that you can- not see. Anywhere the drug can go, the drug can reach tumor cells,” said Dr. Frank Lin, who had no role in the study but heads a division at the National Cancer Institute that helps develop such medicine. Results were released Thursday by the American Society of Clinical On- cology ahead of its annual meeting this weekend. The study was funded by No- vartis, the drug’s maker, which plans to seek approvals in the United States and Europe later this year. See Cancer / A8 OREGON RETURN OF supersonic TRAVEL Jobless claims remain elevated Fraud is partly to blame, officials say Twitter service starts in Canada, Australia Twitter is rolling out a subscription service, starting in Canada and Australia, that offers perks like an undo button for subscribers. The “Twitter Blue” sub- scription service will offer features that users have long asked for — but still no edit button. It includes bookmark folders for or- ganizing saved content; an “Undo tweet” feature that gives users 30 sec- onds to cancel a sent tweet before it appears; a “reader mode” that makes threaded tweets easier to read; and customiz- able app icons and color themes. Subscribers will also get dedicated customer support, meaning issues they report could get at- tention faster than other users. Twitter has been add- ing new features to at- tract new users. The social media site has nearly 200 million daily users, fewer than other social media networks. Facebook had 1.88 billion daily users on average in March 2021. Snapchat, meanwhile, had 280 million average daily active users in the first quarter. q BY MIKE ROGOWAY The Oregonian United Airlines plans to buy 15 jets for flights in 2029 BY DAVID KOENIG • The Associated Press U nited Airlines aims to bring back supersonic travel before the decade is over with a plane that is just an artist’s drawing — even the prototype hasn’t flown yet. The airline said Thursday that it plans to buy 15 jets from Boom Supersonic with an option for 35 more once the start up company designs a plane that flies faster than the speed of sound while meeting safety and environmental standards. United hopes to carry passen- gers on the plane in 2029. The airline said the plane will reduce flights between London and the New York area to just 3 1/2 hours and make Tokyo only six hours from San Francisco. United declined to discuss fi- nancial terms, but Boom CEO Blake Scholl said the deal was worth $3 billion, or $200 million per plane with none of the dis- counting that is typical in the air- craft business. It has been nearly two decades since the last flight of the super- sonic Concorde, which British Airways and Air France began using in 1976 to zip passengers in luxury across the Atlantic. See Supersonic / A8 Boom Supersonic via AP An artist’s rendition shows United Airlines Boom Supersonic Overture jet. United said Thursday that it reached a deal with the startup aircraft maker to buy 15 of Boom’s Overture jets. The planes haven’t been built yet, but Boom says they will fly at 1.7 times the speed of sound, or around 1,300 mph. The number of new jobless claims is falling rapidly across the country as the nation emerges from the pandemic, but not nearly as fast in Ore- gon. For several weeks, the num- ber of jobless claims filed na- tionally have been at their low- est levels of the pandemic. In Oregon, though, the 6,100 new claims filed last week were still well above the number of new claims filed last summer and fall — when Oregonians filed fewer than 5,000 new claims per week. On Wednesday, employment department acting Director David Gerstenfeld acknowl- edged that fraud is a “signif- icant” reason why Oregon’s claims have remained elevated. “We’re seeing people still trying to steal money from the trust fund,” Gerstenfeld said in his weekly media call. Many of those fraudulent claims are never paid, but un- like many other states Oregon has not disclosed how many false claims it does pay. And Oregon won’t say how much it believes its employment insur- ance system has lost to fraud during the pandemic. Fraud has been a major problem elsewhere. Thieves have stolen more than $11 billion in California since the pandemic began last year, for example, and Washington lost more than $200 million in the early weeks of the pandemic. Oregon has said its losses are nowhere near that severe but won’t say just how much thieves have taken, for fear of attracting more attention from the crooks. The state has said the number of fraudulent job- less claims using Oregonians’ stolen identities increased ten- fold last year. See Jobless / A8 Luxury home sales soar as U.S. recovery favors wealthy buyers BY PRASHANT GOPAL Bloomberg Luxury home sales in the U.S. are soaring faster than lower-cost segments as remote work, brimming stock port- folios and rising listings give wealthy buyers an edge. In the three months through April, purchases of high-end homes increased 26% from a year earlier, according to a re- port by the brokerage Redfin. Sales of the most-affordable properties — in high demand by first-time buyers, downsiz- ers and property investors alike — rose 18%. Midpriced homes gained 15%. The rich are best-positioned to buy real estate, now that vac- cines bring the pandemic’s end into view and the inventory crunch begins to ease. Listings of high-end homes in the three-month period rose 19% from a year earlier, outpacing a 14% gain for af- fordable properties and a 9% increase for midpriced listings, Redfin said. “So far, the economic re- covery from the pandemic has disproportionately benefited Americans with bigger bank accounts,” Redfin Chief Econ- omist Daryl Fairweather said in the report. “This means a lot of the demand for homes is coming from folks who are well-off, while many lower-in- come Americans sit on the sidelines because they’ve been priced out of the housing mar- ket.” Redfin divided U.S. resi- dential properties into three equal-sized buckets based on the homes’ market values. The year-over-year changes for prices and inventory were somewhat exaggerated be- cause pandemic lockdowns froze transactions for a couple months starting in April 2020. San Francisco led the surge in expensive home purchases, with an 82% jump, accord- ing to Redfin’s analysis of the country’s 50 most-populous metropolitan areas. Following were neighboring Oakland, with a 72% gain, and Miami, where high-end sales rose 70%.
