I saw this article on “How Well Has Your State Recovered from the Pandemic” (https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-how-well-has-your-state-recovered-from-the-pandemic/) and noticed that MA has the fifth largest drop from January 2020 to May 2020 and the fourth worst recovery from January 2020 to March 2021 (according to Kevin Drum).
Have people been aware of this (lack of) performance? What are the reasons for such a poor recovery? Is it related to the loss of all that student $$$ when the universities and colleges migrated to virtuality? Loss of tourism? Are Governor Baker’s policies part of the reason?
Might be good to start asking these questions.
Please share widely!
We’re hardly the only ones of course, but it remains my view that on principle alone we never should have deliberately shut down the economy.
I’ve been astonished at how little the public information has concentrated on the science of what an infectious virus can do to herd animals (like homo sap sap, the sap) but why I posted this is that MA’s economic record is among the worst of the states in terms of both pandemic economic activity drop and now economic recovery. That such poor performance does not seem to be part of the public conversation is intriguing to me. Charlie Baker skates again.
One article I remember seeing last year suggested that Massachusetts had more people whose employment depended on providing services to office workers than usual. (Think the people stocking the micro-kitchens at Google, for example) Typically these workers aren’t employed directly by the companies they serve, so they would have been laid off right away.
I’m sure the large education sector is a factor as well.
I think Marcus hit the nail on the head. A classic example is People’s Republik which was packed in February 2020 when my friends and I went for drinks one Friday and now it’s totally out of business never to recover. Lots of student or knowledge worker facing businesses shut down. It’s a combination of not enough renter or small business relief, the seesawing Covid regulations which were easier for big businesses to absorb.
Now there’s some hiring slack due to the high no strings attached unemployment. We may have overstimulated the economy with the last round, even though I’m glad the people who needed it got it.
In the longer run it’s the tale of two commonwealth I’ve been harping on. Chelsea, Revere, Lawrence, it’s a depression. In Cambridge, it’s a resilient economy. Huge gap between the haves and have nots. Education access and the lack of skilled workers without college is such a huge part of this.
It’s the “one article… last year” aspect of this which tickles the hair at the back of my neck. There was some discussion of how badly MA was doing in regards to vaccines at the beginning of the rollout but there doesn’t seem to be much discussion of the bottom of the barrel economic recovery now.
There should be, I would have thought. But then what do I know?
Living in Central Square, I see that not only is the People’s Republik gone but so is Dosa Foods and Libby’s Liquor. The Field is also gone but I see that there is construction happening in that space now. There is indeed a two commonwealth problem but I’m not sure how far they are separated from each other. Cambridge might be fooling itself.
For those who are interested, here’s the Harvard study on the “Chelsea Eats” program which gave credit cards to customers of food pantries to ease hunger during COVID: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Taubman/Research/Chelsea%20Eats%20Card%20Spending%20Report%20-%20April%202021.pdf