An Economy That WORKS

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Here in Massachusetts, policies that support economic growth are often pitted as opposed to those that support the marginalized in our communities. The opposite is true. Federal tax revenues don’t go down when we lower tax rates, they go down when we have recessions—since 1980 the only times revenues have declined have been during recessions. Even people who believe in government spending as the way to solve all of society’s ills should support pro-growth policies. Here in Massachusetts, we have a lot of work to restore our pre-pandemic prosperity. That starts with getting people back to work.

 

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• At 9.3%, Massachusetts has the 7th highest average pandemic unemployment. This is fully 3x higher than our Feb. 2020 unemployment (2.8%)—an additional 200K people unemployed every month for the last 18. Even now, at 5%, unemployment is 80% higher.

• During the pandemic, labor force participation plunged. While it has re-bounded some, it remains about 1.5% lower than the 67.2% average for 2015-2019. In Massachusetts, every percent drop represents about 50K people who have dropped out of the labor force

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