Job seekers encouraged by increased hiring

Massachusetts employers have continued to add jobs at a steady pace, giving people who have given up on finding work the confidence to start looking again.

The participation rate — the percentage of working age Bay State residents with a job or actively looking for work — rose 0.3 percent last month to 66.2 percent, the highest that rate has been since June 2010, the state Labor Department said yesterday.

"What this shows is that people who left the labor force during the recession because they couldn't find work are now returning," said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist and professor at Northeastern University. "They're coming back into the labor force because they're being successful (at finding a job), they hear that from their friends."

Economists warn against putting too much stock in one month's data, but said the participation rate, which is a full percentage point above where it was a year ago, is clearly trending in the right direction, even in the face of demographic headwinds.

"We're in a period of time now where baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers, and that puts a downward pressure on participation rate," Clayton-Matthews said. "The fact that this participation rate is as high as it was in 2010, that's significant."

The state also said employers added 10,700 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate dropped 0.1 percent to 4.8 percent.

"I think it's a very encouraging report, and suggests we've weathered the storms," said Michael Goodman, executive director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "This latest report is quite strong."

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Top 3 bond rating agencies give Massachusetts high marks

BOSTON — The nation's top three bond rating agencies are giving Massachusetts a clean bill of fiscal health.

State Treasurer Deb Goldberg said Thursday that Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch have maintained their ratings for the state and affirmed stable economic outlooks ahead of Massachusetts' next competitive bond offering.

The state has held its current rating — one notch below the top possible rating and the highest in state history — since September 2011.

The ratings are largely based on four factors: the state's economy; financial position; debt and financial management; and long-term liabilities.

While Massachusetts has relatively a high level of debt, that's due in part by the heavier role the state takes in the financing of local projects, often handled at the county level in other states.

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Breaking even tough to do in Boston market

On the fence about renting or buying a home? A new analysis compares the costs and how long you would have to live in a home to rationalize the upfront expense of buying it.

In the Boston metro area, buying makes more financial sense if you plan to stay put for at least 3.4 years. That's how long it would take to break even — for the cumulative costs of renting the same home to exceed the purchase costs, according to Zillow, a Seattle online real estate database company.

Boston has the fourth longest break-even rate among the top 35 U.S. metro areas, behind Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.

"The break-even horizons are historically very low," said Svenja Gudell, Zillow's senior director of economic research. "The rule of thumb is if you're going to buy a house, stay in it at least five years. A lot of (break-even rates) we're seeing across the country are lower than that."

Of Boston and Cambridge neighborhoods, Roxbury has the shortest break-even rate at one year, compared to 7.2 years in Beacon Hill. In the middle are West Roxbury at 3.7 years and North Cambridge at 4 years.

The current lower break-even rates are driven by home value appreciation rates that, while slowing, are still quite good, and very low mortgage rates and rising rents. Boston area home values appreciated 4 percent in the 12 months ending in February, while rents rose 5.2 percent.

Based on median household incomes and a 30-year fixed mortgage, Boston-area buyers can expect to spend 22 percent of their monthly income on a mortgage. Renters can expect to pay about 34 percent of their income on rent.

"Affordability is quite good on the for-sale side," Gudell said. "It's not looking so good right now for renters."

Home ownership brings a lot of benefits.

"One of the biggest things is being able to collect equity in your house," Gudell said. "It's like a ginormous savings account for you. But it also brings along a lot of responsibility."

Buyers need to determine the monthly payment they can afford for principal, interest, taxes and insurance, said Norwell financial planner Dan Galli, president of the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts. Keeping those payments to 26 to 28 percent of gross income and keeping total debt to 33 to 34 percent is a good start, he said.

"The challenge is the down-payment and … whether you can get the 20 percent to avoid (private mortgage insurance), or whether you can catch some sort of first-time home buyers program to perhaps let you put a smaller amount down," Galli said.

Dan Walsh, sales manager for William Raveis Real Estate in Boston, advises consulting a qualified mortgage advisor. "A lot of people think if you're buying a $500,000 condo, that they need to put down 20 percent or $100,000," Walsh said. "They might be able to put down 5 percent or less with great credit and still get good rates. And they're also locking in historically low rates, so if they're going to be there for a long time, it's to their advantage."

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Google embraces 'mobile-friendly' sites in search shake-up

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is about to change the way its influential search engine recommends websites on smartphones and tablets in a shift that's expected to sway where millions of people shop, eat and find information.

The revised formula, scheduled to be released Tuesday, will favor websites that Google defines as "mobile-friendly." Websites that don't fit the description will be demoted in Google's search results on smartphones and tablets while those meeting the criteria will be more likely to appear at the top of the rankings — a prized position that can translate into more visitors and money.

Although Google's new formula won't affect searches on desktop and laptop computers, it will have a huge influence on how and where people spend their money, given that more people are relying on their smartphones to compare products in stores and look for restaurants. That's why Google's new rating system is being billed by some search experts as "Mobile-geddon."

"Some sites are going to be in for a big surprise when they find a drastic change in the amount of people visiting them from mobile devices," said Itai Sadan, CEO of website-building service Duda.

It's probably the most significant change that Google Inc. has ever made to its mobile search rankings, according to Matt McGee, editor-in-chief for Search Engine Land, a trade publication that follows every tweak that the company makes to its closely guarded algorithms.

Here are a few things to know about what's happening and why Google is doing it.

___

MAKING MOBILE FRIENDS

To stay in Google's good graces, websites must be designed so they load quickly on mobile devices. Content must also be easily accessible by scrolling up and down — without having to also swipe to the left or right. It also helps if all buttons for making purchases or taking other actions on the website can be easily seen and touched on smaller screens.

If a website has been designed only with PC users in mind, the graphics take longer to load on mobile devices and the columns of text don't all fit on the smaller screens, to the aggravation of someone trying to read it.

Google has been urging websites to cater to mobile device for years, mainly because that is where people are increasingly searching for information.

The number of mobile searches in the U.S. is rising by about 5 percent while inquiries on PCs are dipping slightly, according to research firm comScore Inc. In the final three months of last year, 29 percent of all U.S. search requests — about 18.5 billion — were made on mobile devices, comScore estimated. Google processes the bulk of searches — two-thirds in the U.S. and even more in many other countries.

___

BRACING FOR CHANGE

To minimize complaints, the company disclosed its plans nearly two months ago. It also created a step-by-step guide (http://bit.ly/1GyC0Id ) and a tool to test compliance with the new standards (http://bit.ly/1EVi9R3 ).

Google has faced uproar over past changes to its search formula. Two of the bigger revisions, done in 2011 and 2012, focused on an attempt to weed out misleading websites and other digital rubbish. Although that goal sounds reasonable, many websites still complained that Google's changes unfairly demoted them in the rankings, making their content more difficult to find.

___

STILL CAUGHT OFF GUARD

While most major merchants and big companies already have websites likely to meet Google's mobile standard, the new formula threatens to hurt millions of small businesses that haven't had the money or incentive to adapt their sites for smartphones.

"A lot of small sites haven't really had a reason to be mobile friendly until now, and it's not going to be easy for them to make the changes," McGee said.

___

BURYING HELPFUL CONTENT

Google's search formula weighs a variety of factors to determine the rankings of its results. One of the most important considerations has always been whether a site contains the most pertinent information sought by a search request.

But new pecking order in Google's mobile search may relegate some sites to the back pages of the search results, even if their content is more relevant to a search request than other sites that happen to be easier to access on smartphones.

That will be an unfortunate consequence, but also justifiable because a person might not even bother to look at sites that take a long time to open or difficult to read on mobile devices, Gartner analyst Whit Andrews said.

"Availability is part of relevancy," Andrews said. "A lot of people aren't going to think something is relevant if they can't get it to appear on their iPhone."

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Verizon slices up the bundle, lets customers choose

NEW YORK — The Pay-TV bundle is finally getting more flexible.

Verizon said Friday it is giving its customers more control over the channels they pay for, one of the biggest signs yet that consumer taste for cord-cutting and watching shows a la carte is reshaping the cable industry.

Large cable bundles laden with dozens of channels and big price tags have pushed more people into cheaper streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and Hulu. Other late entries include HBO Now and Sling TV, not to mention sports oriented streaming services like MLB.com.

That's forcing changes in the pay-TV landscape, said Nomura analyst Adam Ilkowitz.

"This is more of an evolution than a revolution," he said. "This is not Verizon saying the bundle is dead — there's still a lot of bundling attached to it. This is an acknowledgement that consumer preference is maybe shifting."

FiOS Custom TV, available Sunday, gives customers the option to buy a base package for about $55. That package has more than 35 channels — such as AMC, CNN and Food Network — plus two additional themed channel packs.

The offer does not include internet service.

There's currently seven channel packs to choose from, including genres such as sports, children and lifestyle. Customers can add more channel packs — which include about 10-17 channels on average — for $10 each. They may also swap out channel packs after 30 days.

Other packages include Double Play, which has TV and Internet, and Triple Play, which includes TV, Internet and phone service. Double Play packages range from about $65 to $85 a month. Triple Play is priced between about $75 and $95 a month.

No contract is required, according to Verizon Communications Inc.

Last month Sony announced the PlayStation Vue service, an online package of more than 50 channels starting at $50 a month. While it's the most expensive of internet-only offerings, doesn't include some popular channels and is currently only available in certain cities, it's still less expensive than most traditional cable and satellite packages. Those packages typically run $70 to $100 a month, excluding promotions.

Other streaming services include Dish's Sling TV.

Verizon shares fell 32 cents to $48.95 in morning trading Friday. Its shares are up almost 3 percent over the past year.

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Loss of Cape Wind sinks bid for marine terminal

A major port operator is no longer competing to run the state's New Bedford marine terminal — a $113 million taxpayer-­funded boondoggle — after the Cape Wind project folded.

"They had a good plan with the wind energy and that's really what we were banking on," said Frank Vannelli, senior vice president for commercial and business development at Logistec Corp. "But when the deal fell through, we just stepped back and we said, 'Let's take a look here at how we're spending our resources' and we decided to put it in a holding pattern."

Without Cape Wind as the main terminal tenant, a bid no longer made sense for Logistec, Vannelli said.

Executives with Cape Wind, who are planning to plant 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound, backed out of a two-year, $4.5 million deal to rent the 28-acre terminal after National Grid and Eversource terminated contracts to buy power from the wind project.

State officials have said a new lease is expected to fetch a lower price for the terminal, which is overbudget and months behind schedule.

Vannelli said the South Coast Marine Commerce Terminal could be conducive to smaller vessels with refrigerated goods, such as frozen fish and fresh fruit, because the area isn't optimal for larger container ships.

"Our organization is still very interested in what's going on in the port of New Bedford and I do think it has a role to play," he said. "I don't think that it's realistic to think that any of these smaller-sized ports would attract large container cargoes. The containers will go to the larger ports. They will go to New York. They will go to Boston."

The quasi-public Massachusetts Clean Energy Center plans to name a port operator by summer, but has yet to make public the three finalists.

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Seattle CEO to cut his pay so every worker earns $70,000

SEATTLE — A Seattle CEO who announced that he's giving himself a drastic pay cut to help cover the cost of big raises for his employees didn't just make those workers happy.

He's already gained new customers, too.

"We've definitely gained a handful of customers in the last day or two," said Stefan Bennett, a customer relations manager at Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processing firm. "We're showing people you can run a good company, and you can pay people fairly, and it can be profitable."

Dan Price, chief executive of the company, stunned his 100-plus workers on Monday when he told them he was cutting his roughly $1 million salary to $70,000 and using company profits to ensure that everyone there would earn at least that much within three years.

For some workers, the increase will more than double their pay. One 21-year-old mother said she'll buy a house.

At a time of increasing anger nationally over the enormous gap between the pay of top executives and their employees, the announcement received immense attention. But corporate governance professor David Larcker of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business said it's unclear if Price's unusual gesture will start a trend.

"It's an alternative way to think about a tough problem, and I give these guys a lot of credit for laying it out there," Larcker said. "Whether this would scale to a bigger organization, it's hard to know. But it's clever, it's interesting and it's fun to think about."

Washington state already has the nation's highest minimum wage at $9.47 an hour, and earlier this month Seattle's minimum wage law went into effect. It will eventually raise base hourly pay to $15.

Labor unions and workers in the Seattle area on Wednesday joined national protests for better pay. Drivers for Uber and Lyft — the app-based car-hailing services — gathered in Seattle, while airport workers rallied at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In Seattle, police arrested 21 demonstrators who opted for civil disobedience to dramatize their point, refusing to move out of an intersection at the conclusion of their march.

Gravity's CEO launched the company from his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University when he was just 19. He's long taken a progressive approach that included adopting a policy allowing his workers to take unlimited paid vacation after their first year.

"I think this is just what everyone deserves," Price told workers in a video of Monday's announcement released by the company.

But he also acknowledged it won't be easy: The increased pay will eat into at least half the company's profits, he said, and he has no plans to simply raise rates on clients.

"It's up to us to find a way to make it work," he said.

Bennett, 28, went to college with Price and has worked for Gravity since graduation. He said he was already happy to work for a company that treats its employees and customers well in what he otherwise considers a predatory industry. For him, the raise will amount to about $10,000.

"I don't care as much about the money," he said. "But if I look at my colleagues, and what they talk about on a day-to-day basis and what their concerns are — just looking at their faces when Dan announced the pay increase, it was pretty phenomenal."

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Users sold on Pinterest: Social network rolls out strong advertising platform

The image-sharing network Pinterest is slowly rolling out its long-­awaited advertising platform, giving busi­nesses new power to promote pins in what is sure to be a huge test of Facebook's marketing dominance.

The only question is why one of the largest social networks in the world waited so long.

From retailers to brands to politicians, Pinterest has been a requirement for a few years now. Anyone looking to generate buzz is already on Pinterest — pulling out all the visual stops in a bid to get noticed by the platform's 72.5 million users.

With e-commerce increasingly a mobile-centric proposition, Pinterest is already where it needs to be: 75 percent of its usage takes place on a tablet or a smartphone, according to the company.

Yet Facebook has a giant head start, with at least 10 times the mobile users. Mobile ads now account for 98 percent of Facebook's revenue growth, and the social network is adding new features for advertisers on almost a daily basis.

If you're wondering why you keep seeing ads for products on Facebook that interest you, it's because Facebook tracks your habits with great precision. Causes you donate to, products you buy, pages you like, whether you've recently entered into a new relationship — Facebook lets advertisers target you based on all that information and much, much more.

But Facebook has also royally damaged its relationship with some small businesses by suppressing content that is not paid for. So if you're a small retailer looking to gain traction, you're going to find it nearly impossible to show up in users' news feeds unless you pay the piper.

It's easy to see some of those businesses shifting ad spending to Pinterest as it seeks to be the top visual search engine on the web. So far, Pinterest's advertising platform is impressive. Advertisers can target users based on keywords, location and device. And they only pay when a user clicks on the promoted pin.

Though 71 percent of Pinterest users are women, according to comScore, Pinterest claims more men use the platform in the U.S. every month than read Sports Illustrated and GQ combined. In emerging markets such as India and South Korea, the demographic is more evenly split. And one-third of new sign-ups are men.

It's only a matter of time before all those pretty pictures on the platform feature something new: a "buy now" button.

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'Paul Blart' leads lowest TV ad spend week yet this year

In this week's edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by iSpot.tv, the lull of the pre-summer release schedule was felt in full force as the industry collectively spent the least amount on advertising new movies yet this year. But consider this the calm before the storm, as next month the summer blockbuster season begins and ad budgets are almost certainly due to ramp up in support.

Leading the charge was "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2," with an estimated $6 million spent on 1,351 national airings across 50 networks led by Cartoon Network and Disney XD. That was still more than twice what every other film on the list spent this week.

In second, "The Longest Ride" put forth $2.7 million on 1,053 national airings across 26 networks led by VH1 and MTV. Disney's "Monkey Kingdom" followed with $2.4 million spent on 624 national airings across 26 networks led by Disney XD and Nick. In fourth was "The Adge of Adaline" with $2.2 million spent on 411 national ads across 25 networks, led by TV Guide Network and E!.

Although "The Avengers: Age of Ultron" debuted with $2 million spent on 258 national airings across 27 networks led by Disney XD and Nick, expect to see a surge in the coming weeks as it gears up for the May 1 opening weekend to kick off the summer season.

That adds up to a paltry $15.3 million for the top five alone, and a mere $32.7 million for the industry overall. Typically, the top five advertisers alone will spend between $30 million to $40 million on any given week. In the 14 weeks of the year so far, the industry has spent just over $1 billion on TV advertising. That averages to about $73 million a week. So by comparison this was a frugal week by any measure.

Columbia Pictures led the way with an estimated $6.1 million on five spots receiving 1,449 national airings, followed by Universal Pictures with $3.7 million, and Lionsgate with $3.5 million, both with five spots each and less than 1,000 national airings.

$6M - Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

Online Activity: 0.77% within the movie category*

National Airings: 1,351

Networks: 50

Most Aired On: Cartoon Network, Disney XD

Creative Versions: 31

Est. Lifetime TV Spend: $17.1M

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Started Airing: 03/16/15

$2.7M - The Longest Ride

Online Activity: 4.74% within the movie category*

National Airings: 1,053

Networks: 26

Most Aired On: VH1, MTV

Creative Versions: 25

Est. Lifetime TV Spend: $17.7M

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

Started Airing: 03/01/15

$2.4M - Monkey Kingdom

Online Activity: 0.63% within the movie category*

National Airings: 624

Networks: 26

Most Aired On: Disney XD, Nick

Creative Versions: 16

Est. Lifetime TV Spend: $5M

Studio: Walt Disney Pictures

Started Airing: 03/07/15

$2.2M - The Age of Adaline

Online Activity: 1.52% within the movie category*

National Airings: 411

Networks: 25

Most Aired On: TV Guide Network, E!

Creative Versions: 8

Est. Lifetime TV Spend: $7.9M

Studio: Lionsgate

Started Airing: 03/15/15

$2M - The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Online Activity: 15.54% within the movie category*

National Airings: 258

Networks: 27

Most Aired On: Disney XD, Nick

Creative Versions: 22

Est. Lifetime TV Spend: $11.5M

Studio: Marvel

Started Airing: 01/01/15

¹ Movie titles with a minimum spend of $100,000 for airings detected between 04/07/2015 and 04/13/2015.
* Percent of digital activity captured across online video, social media, and search activity that was stimulated by these movie trailers and measured in comparison to all online activity in the movie category.

Variety has partnered with iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV commercials in real time, to bring you this weekly look at what studios are spending to market their movies on TV. Learn more about the iSpot.tv platform and methodology.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Netflix shares soar to all-time high after huge subscriber gains

Netflix stock shot up more than 13% Thursday, hitting an all-time high of $541.43 per share in early trading, after the No. 1 subscription-video player packed on about 860,000 more streaming customers than expected in the first quarter of 2015.

The company added 4.9 million streaming subs worldwide in the period, including 2.28 million in the U.S.

Netflix's big stock move gives it a market cap of more than $32 billion, making it more valuable -- at the moment -- than media companies including CBS, Viacom and Discovery Communications.

"Overall we view Q1 domestic streaming results as emphatically positive -- exceeding revenue estimates and (perhaps more importantly) materially beating net sub adds expectations," RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney wrote in a research note.

With roughly 39 million U.S. subs and 18 million international customers, Netflix is "one of the largest global entertainment subscription businesses," Mahaney added. "We believe that Netflix has achieved a level of sustainable
scale, growth, and profitability that isn't currently reflected in its stock price." The analyst maintained an "outperform" rating on the stock, with a price target of $600.

Netflix, for its part, attributed the strong subscriber gains stemmed from its growing programming lineup, including the Q1 launch of "House of Cards" season 3 and new shows "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" (pictured above) and "Bloodline." Another eagerly awaited original series, "Marvel's Daredevil," hit the service April 10, after the end of the first quarter on March 31.

The company's original-content strategy is now fueling a virtuous cycle, driving up both gross adds and cutting churn, according to UBS analyst Doug Mitchelson.

"Netflix reminds us of ESPN's virtuous cycle 15 years ago, when ESPN's leadership allowed it to acquire more and better sports rights, helping drive strong growth off its leading revenue base and so on," he wrote in a research note. That resulted in ESPN building an "insurmountable" edge over rivals: "ESPN spends more on sports rights than any other network, and also makes more money on sports rights than any other network.

On the strong Q1 results, Cowen & Co. analyst John Blackledge raised estimates for Netflix subscriber gains for 2015 and beyond. This year, he estimates, the company will add 6 million U.S. and 11 million international subs (up from the previous 4.8 million and 8.5 million, respectively). The analyst also raised his price target on the stock from $465 to $625 per share.

The most recent quarter stands in contrast to Netflix's third quarter of 2014, when the company badly missed expectations on sub growth (gaining 3.2 million, 670,000 fewer than it had forecast). That pushed the stock down as much as 26%.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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