The Globe posted that the Massachusetts economy grew by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, showing steady growth that we have grown accustomed to in 2010. Additional positive news is that the nation’s economy also grew in the first quarter of 2011. What stands out is how Massachusetts continues to outpace the nation in growth.
The Massachusetts economy grew at a 4.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year, more than twice as fast as the nation’s, the University of Massachusetts reported today.
It is news like this that continues to throw water on the not ready for prime time MA GOP, who have been posting their Reasons to Leave series this month and continues to post about Fidelity. While facts and truth clearly point out that Massachusetts is fairing well in comparison to the nation and other states. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics recently posted job growth by state for the first quarter, Massachusetts is in the top 10 in percentage job growth for the first quarter of 2011.
While reading the MA GOP News, what I find most troubling is they offer no ideas or solutions. Is it that they didn’t learn from the 2010 elections or that they just don’t care.
It’s quite true — the MA Republicans aren’t quite sure what to do (what else is new). It’s also interesting that at the same time that the MA GOP keeps posting material that conflicts with the facts on the ground, the reaction to this positive economic news from our differently-winged over at RMG has been…absolute silence.
It says a lot about the current state of the right-wing that they say nothing about the economy, but have a lot of crazy conspiratorial nonsense (check out the comments) to post in regards to Obama’s birth certificate. Pretty sad.
Better than losing jobs, but. its nothing to crow about. Economic performance about the same as NH in job growth.
That’s a huge quarterly gain. That’s growing well faster than the rate of population. Of course it’s worth crowing about. Will we need more 4.2% quarters to get back to full employment? Youbetcha.
Don’t play the role of rooting against success because we’re a Democratic state. It’s silly.
…the 4.2% number is annualized growth, so the actual growth in the quarter was 1.05%. Still it’s a great number, and if we end the year over 4%, we’ll be doing well!
I didn’t believe it and checked the article
Sorry if it was ambiguous — using annual rate of growth is like using real dollars — it’s a given if we’re going to compare apples to apples.
percentage growth take the smaller market into account, NH had 1/5th of the job force as MA, while NH did well, MA still did better. As stomv noted rooting against the state as the MA GOP seems to be doing is not the best of paths. We’ve been there and it didn’t work out too well for them.
… what do you do for an encore? Do you take young children to the circus and point out the unfunny clowns?
How about spreading the wealth a little bit? Most of that growth occurred in the eastern part of the state. The reports from the west are not as good:
Massachusetts economy grows by 4.2%; Western Mass. still lags behind
Springfield’s unemployment rate is 12.9%, and that is understated since it does not count a lot of people here who are not looking for work. We have a lower cost of living, more open space — if harnessed properly, we could really propel the economy.
with NH at 0.96%