Mixed News On MetroWest Economy
Eileen Kennedy
Donald MacRitchie, the co-director of the MetroWest Economic Research Center at Framingham State College, discussed the cost of living for the MetroWest area.
The MetroWest Economic Research Center's 17th annual conference this morning on the area's economy had expected news: unemployment and the cost of groceries and transportation have gone up while housing prices and K-12 public school enrollments have gone down.
Much of the data presented was through 2007. The conference was held on the campus of Framingham State College, where MERC is located.
As of October 2008, the MetroWest cost of living had increased 7.5 percent since April 2005, but overall has decreased 1 percent since September 2007. Groceries, as most shoppers can attest, and transportation, with gasoline costs going mostly up, saw the biggest increases.
But there were also nuggets of news, both good and bad.
After losses of 7,800 manufacturing jobs in the MetroWest/Greater Marlborough area between 2001 and 2004, that sector saw jobs increase for three straight years from 2005 through 2007. This growth happened at the same time that the state as a whole continued to lose manufacturing jobs. Of course, next year's conference may tell a different story.
In 2007, the MetroWest/Greater Marlborough Region reached a record total employment of 180,000, a gain of over 2,700 jobs or a 1.5 percent increase over 2006.
Average wages were up too. In 2007, the Greater Marlborough region topped the MetroWest area in annual wages with $66,300 as the average annual wages versus MetroWest's $63,000 a year.
And the MetroWest and Greater Marlborough areas remain, at least for 2007, one of the state's economic powerhouses with a payroll of $11.6 billion. That payroll is concentrated in manufacturing, professional business services and trade, transportation and utilities sectors. That's a 7.3 percent increase over 2006.
In 2007, Framingham alone had a payroll of $3 billion while Marlborough's was $2.3 billion, Westborough's was $1.6 billion and Natick's was $1.3 billion.
The bad news is that the number of businesses in the MetroWest/Greater Marlborough area decreased between 2004, when there were 10,530 businesses, and 2007, when there were 10,140.
Maureen Dunne, one of MERC's presenters, said that should be of concern because if there are fewer businesses, chances are a good portion of the ones that have disappeared are smaller businesses. "Entrepreneurial start-ups are where we get our financial and innovative lifeblood," Dunne said.
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