Thought of the Day - 01/25/2010

The opening line of this story in today’s Boston Globe says it all:

“Massachusetts marked a sobering milestone last month: For the first time since World War II, the state ended a decade with fewer jobs than it had at the beginning.”

According to the article, Massachusetts has failed to replace many of the high-tech jobs that were lost when the dot-com bubble burst several years ago. At the same time, we’ve also lost a full one-third of our manufacturing jobs. The net job loss since 1999 is about 55,000 jobs.

The sad reality is that many Massachusetts families don’t need a newspaper story to tell them what’s wrong with our economy. Thousands of families are dealing with job loss as part of their daily lives, and as unemployment checks, bank accounts and retirement savings begin to run out, people are struggling to find ways to pay the bills.

When you hold up today’s Globe story against another recent article in the MetroWest Daily News, you begin to understand the real effects of this problem. According to numbers cited in the MetroWest Daily News, about 277,000 people have moved out of Massachusetts since 2000.

As far as I’m concerned, the inescapable conclusion is that, for every job Massachusetts lost, a family was forced to move out of this state to search for better opportunities elsewhere. And they took with them the job skills they sought to apply here, and the kids they sought to educate here, and the talents they sought to enrich our state with.

This trend is more than just unsustainable. It’s a recipe for economic disaster. And it’s time for our state to do something to grow jobs here.

Governor Patrick promised to do something about creating jobs in his State of the Commonwealth Address last week. But he needs to realize that Massachusetts residents need more than just another year of promises and false hope. They need jobs. Now.

How has the recession been affecting you? Do you know someone who was forced to move out of Massachusetts due to job loss? What do you think we should do about these problems? Please post a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.