Whats the state of the Massachusetts labor market?
We have seen over the past three or four months that the gains made since Governor [Deval] Patrick took office are being eroded by the downturn in the national economy. We’re beginning to experience job losses as other states have. How bad might it get? We use Moody’s Economy.com as our primary method of predicting unemployment. We are anticipating that the rate could go a full percentage point higher in 2009, in the neighborhood of 6.5 percent. What is the state doing to deal with layoffs? One of the basic functions we’ve had to ramp up is unemployment claims taking. We haven’t had enough people answering the phone. We started hiring additional staff, half of whom are bilingual, to take claims. We’re extending the hours in the 37 career centers around the state. We’re trying to strengthen the vocational school ties with community colleges so we have people getting trained for the jobs that are out there. Have you ever seen a year like 2008? It was actually worse for us back in the 199
