ARTICLES By Sheila Palma

Recapturing the American Dream

Meeting the Challenges of the Bay State's Lost Decade

This joint project with the Center for Labor Market Studies was made possible by the generous support of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Partners Health Care. More so than any previous report, this research sheds light on the economic well-being of workers at a moment when public attention is hyper-focused on policymaking to

Mass Jobs

Meeting the Challenges of a Shifting Economy

The Massachusetts economy is the envy of many other states. It consistently ranks among the top in measures of New Economy success. We rank near the top of the nation in our level of labor productivity and have outpaced the nation in recent years in the rate of growth (11.5% versus 10.6%). We have the

Mass Economy

The Labor Supply and Our Economic Future

This research assesses the health of the state’s supply of labor, both now and into the future. A key question is whether the state has an adequate supply of qualified workers to fuel our next round of economic expansion. In recent years, when the national economy began to recover from the recession of 2001, the

The Changing Face of Massachusetts

The Changing Face of Massachusetts is a joint project of MassINC and the Center for Labor Market Studies and was made possible by the generous support of a number of sponsors, including the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Verizon, Citizens Bank, Polaroid, and Bank of America’s Frank W. and Carl S. Adams Memorial Fund. The demographics

The State of the American Dream in Massachusetts, 2002

The new research finds that the path to economic success for Massachusetts families and workers is narrow and unforgiving, and those who stumble pay dearly. The report argues that the difficulty today in obtaining, or holding onto, a reasonably secure middle-class standard of living is the result of fundamental changes in the “recipe” for achieving

New Skills for a New Economy

Adult Education's Key Role in Sustaining Economic Growth and Expanding Opportunity

According to this new groundbreaking report from MassINC, more than a third (1.1 million) of Massachusetts’s 3.2 million workers are ill equipped to meet the demands of the state’s rapidly changing economy. This threatens the state’s ability to sustain the current economic boom and traps the workers themselves in jobs with little opportunity to advance.

The Changing Workforce

Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts

The Massachusetts economy may be booming, but have you ever wondered where local companies, large and small, are finding their new employees? The answer will surprise you. The Changing Workforce, a joint research project of MassINC and Citizens Bank, discovered that since the mid-1980s foreign immigrants, not native-born workers, account for an astounding 82 percent

The Road Ahead

Emerging Threats to the Massachusetts Economy

The report includes detailed analysis on the economic condition of workers and families in Massachusetts, the soaring costs of housing and the state’s high personal tax burden, the state’s slow labor force growth rates, the troubling out-migration of young, college-educated workers to other states, the growing trends of income inequality across families and across regions,

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