SundayNewspaper

2 R REACH THE EDITORS | Rami Grunbaum , Editor 206-464-8541 rgrunbaum@seattletimes.com block-and-a-half from the beach. But I could never buy a house. It took successive moves across the country to reach big newspapers and better money. (When the big San Diego paper offeredme the business-editor job in 1998, it was still paying poorly). What’s different today is the hollowing out of middle-wage jobs and the startling rise of low-wage positions, often with no way up. My calling is in a desperate con- dition as newspapers close and the gloomiest predictions hover over our future. That’s another change: Entire industries have beenmade obsolete, sent offshore or been “disrupted.” These trends can coexist with a 50-year-old low in unemployment goosed by Keynes- ian stimulus. Still, some Goldilocks metros exist, where people without bache- lor’s degrees can find work and the lower cost of livingmakes the wages go further. This is the conclusion of a new report fromKyle Fee and Lisa Nel- son of the Cleveland Fed and Keith Wardrip of the Philadelphia Fed. They seek to identify the best plac- es for “opportunity jobs” — “em- ployment accessible to workers without a bachelor’s degree and typically paying above the national annual median wage ($37,690), adjusted for regional differences in consumer prices.” The sloganmight be: GoMid- west, young people without de- See > TALTON, D4 HUNTING FOR A GOOD JOB? HEAD TO THE MIDWEST Jon Talton Special to The Seattle Times If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, Seattle is probably not the best metropolitan area for you. This high-wage, high-quality econo- my is heavy on tech- nology and other advanced indus- tries, requiring workers withmore education and skills than the aver- age Americanmetro. Rents are high. Buying a house is out of the question for many. Seattle is a coveted location, too, withmany people bidding for the best positions. I wonder howmany Ph.D.s in the liberal arts are work- ingmultiple fast-food jobs to enjoy the Space Needle, Mount Rainier and Puget Sound. Some of this is not new. When I was starting out my career at a small-but-feisty newspaper in San Diego County in the 1980s, even with a college degree I was paid in “sunshine dollars.” Unfortunately, the supermarket didn’t accept this currency. I had an apartment a Sunday Buzz Local business bits Female-led startups are lacking in the area Seattle Times business staff The Pacific Northwest may pride itself on gender equality, but that message hasn’t quite hit the re- gion’s technology startups. According to a new report on the world’s most productive startup “ecosystems,” just 8 percent of tech startups in the Seattle area have women founders, according the Global Startup EcosystemRe- port, which was released Thursday by San Francisco-based Startup Genome. That puts the Seattle well behind the most gender-balanced startup ecosystems, including Chicago and Melbourne, where a third of start- ups are founded and run by wom- en, and New York City, with around 24 percent. Among the world’s top 15 such ecosys- tems, on- ly Paris has as small a share as Seattle. Seattle’s percentage is well below that of Silicon Valley (16 percent) and the global average (17.2 percent), according to the report. Seattle’s poor showing is particu- larly striking, given that the city is 12th out of the world’s 15most productive startup ecosystems, according the report, which ranked some 80 cities on their startup activity. The report doesn’t offer any specific explanation as to why Seat- tle was so far behind other startup hubs in percentage of women founders. One possible factor may be the kind of venture capital that Seattle startups attract, says Amy Nelson, founder and CEO of The Riveter, a Seattle-based co-working and community startup that has fo- cused on women and now has See > BUZZ, D5 More Buzz inside | > D5 • Amazon Spheres inspire an Iceland architect’s biodome plans. In this section > REAL ESTATE: Top days to put sell your > D2 REDFIN: Tests click-and- bid for homebuyers > D5 JAFFE: Spring cleaning for financial papers > D4 predictions, combinedwith old-fashioned economies of scale, will allow them to be far more efficient than traditional home flippers. The companies and their backers say they are doingwhat tech is best at: bringing efficien- By CONOR DOUGHERTY AND BEN CASSELMAN The New York Times In today’s on-demand digital world, buying and sell- ing a home remains stubbornly, painfully analog. Most sales still beginwith a real-estate agent (and a 6% commission). Most still end in an office, with the two sides signing page after page of legalese. The technology sector wants to change that. Tech companies have begun to nibble away at the edges of the residential real-estate indus- try, offering virtual open houses, digital closings and other services. Now they are coming straight for the real-estate trans- action itself through “instant buying,” inwhich com- panies buy homes, perform some light maintenance and put themback on themarket. C A I T L I N O ’ H A R A / T H E N EW Y O R K T I ME S Eddy Gomez paints trim in a house Zillow bought for resale in Phoenix, Arizona, last month. The company sends crews to paint, carpet and landscape recently purchased properties so they can be put back on the market quickly. “ You should be able to sell a home within a handful of clicks.” ERIC WU CEO of Opendoor Established companies like Zillowand venture-backed upstarts like Opendoor and Offerpad have raised billions of dollars on the promise that they can use sophisticated algorithms to predict the value of individual homes. They contend that those cy and convenience to a process not known for either. Silicon Valley has already upended the way we hail a cab and order takeout, they argue. Why not improve a transaction that even well-educated professionals find intimidating? “You should be able to sell a home within a handful of clicks,” said EricWu, Open- door’s chief executive. But houses are not taxicabs. A bad Uber ridemight set a user back $20 andmake the passen- See > HOMES, D5 C A I T L I N O ' H A R A / T H E N EW Y O R K T I ME S Dora Cagnetto, of Phoenix, got an offer of $382,000 from Zil- low for her town house without doing any repairs. Redfin is testing a click- and-bid program for homebuyers > D5 Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates talks with “60 Minutes Australia” about the “huge issues” in the Boeing 737 MAX’s flawed design. st.news/60minutes737 MORE ON SEATTLETIMES.COM ‘INSTANT BUYING’ Can it make a home sale as simple as ordering takeout? Companies such as Zillow and Opendoor say algorithms and data will make their homebuying and flipping more efficient. But speed comes with risks, skeptics say. All advertised Annual Percent- age Yields (APY) are accurate as of 5/10/19, and are subject to change without notice. For all terms, interest compounds daily and is credited to the ac- count quarterly; APY assumes principal and interest remain on deposit until maturity. An early withdrawal penalty may be imposed if funds are withdrawn prior to maturity. After maturity, a grace period of 10 calendar days applies before auto-renewal occurs. Fees may reduce earnings on the account. Minimum balance required to open and obtain stated APY is $1,000. Maximum balance per CD is between $210,000 and $245,000 depending on term. Contact us for details. Call, stop in, or open an account online today! 206.281.1500 seattlebank.com 600 University Street Suite 1850, Seattle, WA 98101-1129 Certificate of Deposit (CD) Promotion 1 yr: 2.80% 2 yr: 2.95% 5 yr: 3.30% APY BUSINESS Dow 25,942.37 down 562.58, -2.12% Nasdaq 7,916.94 down 247.06, -3.03% Russell 3000 1,699.78 down 38.17, -2.20% Z Z Z seattletimes.com/business | MAY 12, 2019 | C5