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.

Thought of the Day - 01/12/2010

Yesterday, local employer Charles River Labs announced that it plans to cease operations in Shrewsbury due to a slowdown in the biopharmaceutical industry, laying off approximately 300 employees in the process. This is the latest of a series of job reductions announced by Massachusetts employers in recent months. For my district, it’s especially bad news because it hits home.

Our state can’t afford to keep seeing bad headlines like this in the papers. Massachusetts residents need jobs. The strength of our economy depends on jobs, as does the strength of every household across the commonwealth. Whenever we hear of an employer like Charles River Labs cutting back its operations, it’s evidence that we still have a lot to do to fix our economy and to put Massachusetts back to work again.

On the surface, this decision and others like it are business judgments being made by companies across Massachusetts. It’s perfectly understandable that private sector employers would make difficult decisions to trim their budgets at a time like this, much like I’ve been urging the public sector to do. But it’s also safe to assume that the unfriendly business climate we have created for ourselves in Massachusetts is playing into such decisions, if only indirectly. Public policies like high tax rates translate into added costs for struggling businesses, and when these inescapable costs are factored in to the bottom line, they sometimes lead to other unfortunate results like job loss and factory closures.

There’s only so much we can do to help fix the global economy, and there’s no doubt that the best remedy for our job market here in Massachusetts would be a general economic turnaround. That will come, in time. But there is a lot that we can do to make Massachusetts a friendlier place for businesses to operate, like keeping taxes and fees low, maintaining a robust education system to train workers, and creating affordable housing to keep residents’ cost of living low. We’re not doing enough on that front, and if we want to avoid seeing more stories like the one involving Charles River Labs, we need to start acting now.

You can read more about Charles River Labs in this story in the Boston Business Journal. What do you think? Are you being affected by the Charles River Labs decision? What do you think the state should do to prevent stories like this in the future? Please post your thoughts below.

Thought of the Day - 10/26/2009

There's a front page story in the Boston Globe today that says the economy is forecast to grow by about 2 percent over the next year, but over the same time employers are expecting to cut about 37,000 more jobs in this state.

It's great news that the economy might be on the rebound, but that's cold comfort to people who have lost jobs or who are about to be laid off. Unemployment in this state is already at its highest level since the 1970's. Finding a job is difficult because, aside from the fact that many companies are still cutting back, many others lack enough confidence in the economy to start hiring again, even if their fiscal situation is improving.

An economic recovery in Massachusetts won’t mean much to average people until it results in jobs coming back to our state, and that's going to take some time and some effort. For its part, state government needs to do whatever it can to help the business community and boost confidence. We need a business policy that is smart and sustainable to lure companies back to the Bay State and to encourage them to stay and grow here.