january 2011 marks the tenth anniversary of MassINC’s New Skills for a New Economy report. The report’s main finding that 1.1 million workers in Massachusetts—a third of the state’s workforce —lacked skills essential to the “new economy” was broadcast far and wide. In one fell swoop, an issue that previously generated very little attention was […]
Growth and Development
Posted inEconomy
Money talks—and delivers
until his arrest last year, few Bostonians had heard of Martin Raffol. Many more people, however, had probably heard of his boss, Arthur Winn—one of the state’s most prolific affordable housing developers, the businessman behind the failed Columbus Center development, and a highly public business figure who had become entangled with Dianne Wilkerson, the disgraced […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Politics, The Download
The Download: Map quest
It’s a decennial dance that makes sausage-making look like an art form. Congressional redistricting, mandated every 10 years by the federal census, is once again playing out in all corners of the country. Massachusetts legislators, who have the added chore of fashioning nine districts out of 10 because of population growth in other areas of […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, The Download
The Download: Where the grads are
Well-educated people tend to congregate together, and sometimes so do high school dropouts. Portfolio.com scoured Census data for information on educational attainment and then ranked the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas. The accompanying story – “Brain bounty or brain busted?” – doesn’t add much, but the list itself is something you just can’t help checking […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care, The Download
The Download: Immunization exemptions
Whooping cough, an infectious bacterial disease that causes uncontrollable coughing, used to be one of the most common childhood diseases in the United States and a major cause of childhood deaths. Then a vaccine was developed and the disease became something of an oddity. But not in California. The Left Coast state is coping with […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics, The Download
The Download: Pondering patronage
Former Senate president Billy Bulger practiced the trade with such abandon that MBTA was said to stand for “Mr. Bulger’s Transportation Authority,” an only partially tongue-in-cheek reference that seemed to make him beam, not cringe. One of his Senate president successors, Robert Travaglini, spoke of it as something more akin a solemn duty when he […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Sept. report shows job growth slows
Today’s unemployment report – the last before the November gubernatorial election – suggests the pace of recent job growth may be slowing. The unemployment rate in September fell to 8.4 percent, down from 8.8 percent in August and way below the national rate of 9.6 percent. But that good news was undercut by the disclosure […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Tribes lobby for reservation land
The demise of state gambling legislation this summer was a blow to Gov. Deval Patrick and many legislators, but no one was more disappointed when the deal fell apart than members of two Massachusetts Indian tribes, the 2,200-member Mashpee Wampanoag and the 1,200-member Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). For years, both tribes have eyed […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
Overcoming tough times
Economic crises are social accelerators—things that were abstractly understood as trends are suddenly new and crushing realities. Twenty-five years ago, while the “Massachusetts Miracle” of growth charmed a generation of optimists, some observers of “deindustrialization” warned us about a looming vision of an hourglass economy of unequal incomes and unremitting pressures on single-parent families and […]
Posted inEconomy
A ballpark assessment
can you believe it? Fenway Park, America’s most beloved ballpark, home to the Green Monster and Pesky’s Pole, and sacred ground to Red Sox Nation, is worth less than some Boston parking garages. Mercy! The assessed value of Fenway Park has risen dramatically since John Henry’s ownership group bought the Red Sox in 2002 and […]