Boston Globe: Revised data show slower growth in Mass
The Boston Globe featured an article outlining the findings of MassBenchmarks most recent bulletin. MassBenchmarks, an economic journal published by the UMass Donahue Institute and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, lowered its estimate of the state’s economic growth after the Department of Labor revised its initial estimates of the state’s job numbers. The revisions, based on additional data that became available over the year, showed that Massachusetts created just over 9,000 jobs- far fewer than the nearly 41,000 which were first reported.
Alan Clayton-Matthews, senior contributing editor of MassBenchmarks said relatively slow growth in tax collections last year - which rise when more people are employed and earning salaries - signaled that job gains might be smaller than the initial employment data showed. Also, the state may have been affected by the drying up of federal stimulus funds and the European debt crisis. Europe is the market for about 40 percent of the state’s exports.
Michael Goodman, co-editor of MassBenchmarks cautioned against using the government’s revised state jobs numbers as the “sole barometer’’ of the Massachusetts economy. “What happened in the second half of 2011 is still unclear,’’ Goodman said.
Read article: Revised data show slower growth in Mass
March 21, 2012
