Behind The Sound Bite
This week’s sound bite comes from Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, who during a recent meeting in Framingham to discuss downtown traffic improvements, turned to an aide from his office to recall that “44 percent of employees in MetroWest live in Framingham.” While the spirit of the point he was trying to make is undoubtedly true — that Framingham is a hub of economic activity in the region — the Worcester Business Journal was unable to find any data that supported that claim.
Homeward Bound
According to the MetroWest Economic Research Center at Framingham State College, there is no statistic that tracks where workers in the region reside. There are statistics that track how many jobs are located in each community, but there is no way to track where those people live, just the size of that workforce.
Employment Hub
It turns out that Murray was near correct if you look at the number of jobs Framingham supplies to the region. If MetroWest is defined as the communities of Ashland, Framingham, Holliston, Hopkinton, Natick, Sherborn, Southborough, Sudbury and Wayland, which is defined by MERC as the core MetroWest area, then Framingham’s 45,600 jobs represent 41.4 percent of the total jobs in MetroWest, the largest of any of those the communities.
Defining A Region
However, not everyone thinks of MetroWest as the aforementioned nine towns. If the region is broadened to include Marlborough, Westborough, Hudson and Northborough, then Framingham supplies just 25 percent of all the jobs in the region. And when the area is expanded to the 32 communities lining Interstate 495, Framingham supplies 15.6 percent of the jobs, according to MERC figures.
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