Economic Forecast Presentation

1/31/2020

Dr. Mark Melnick of the Donahue Institute giving the Chamber an economic overview

Dr. Mark Melnick of The Donahue Institute spoke at our Economic Outlook breakfast co-sponsored with Envision Bank. We are pleased to share his presentation which included some nice comparisons on how the South Shore stacks up with the rest of the state on key economic factors. It validated some of our work on South Shore 2030 to make the region economically stronger. We were particularly impressed with three slides:

Slide 9 shows we are 1/3 below (less competitive) the state’s concentrations of jobs in the high talent/high salaried Professional and Technical service industry mix but more concentrated than the state’s overall share in the financial services (by almost 70%) and retail (by 30%) sectors. That illustrates one of the underlying challenge facing the South Shore. Some of our largest job sectors are in contracting industries that are shedding jobs while at the same time we have a smaller share of some key sectors that are growing and have higher paying jobs. Our challenge becomes how do we expand and attract the growth sectors. We believe we do it by growing the talent and workforce available on the South Shore.
Slide 22 compares the percentage of family income going to housing. That has declined for homeowners since the recession but has stayed high for apartment owners. The percentage of course depends on two factors: household incomes and the cost of the housing. Overall we believe this supports our housing agenda. It suggests we are not building enough of the housing product (multi-family such as apartments) that young professionals are looking for. That keeps apartment rents too high for many younger people. That in turn limits our ability to grow the workforce.
Finally, slide 27 nicely captures our transportation and economic challenge. (This compares the middle section of the South Shore). We have 1/3 more residents commuting out of the area for jobs than workers coming in from other regions. This reinforces information from our Original 2030 study that the entire South Shore has more people leaving the area for jobs than coming in for jobs. And most of our traffic heads North to or through Boston. While we continue to work on the Boston commute for our residents the better solution to the transportation problem is creating more jobs in the region so residents have better employment choices than driving to Boston.

Download the entire presentation here

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