Mass. slowdown: Economy’s growth rate ‘alarming’

The Boston Herald reports:

Massachusetts’ economic expansion slowed to a “virtual standstill” late last year — with no improvement in sight, according to a pessimistic University of Massachusetts report released yesterday.
The state’s economy has slowed so much, one UMass economist said, that it’s reminiscent of stagnant economic times after World War II when Massachusetts lost many manufacturing jobs.
“It’s alarming,” said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist who helped compile the “Benchmarks Bulletin” for the UMass Donahue Institute.


“This slowdown in the Massachusetts economy is not really the downside of a business cycle, but rather reflects an economy that is stagnating under the pressures of a high cost of living, outsourcing (of jobs), offshoring (of jobs), and competition from Asia for the state’s information technology products,” wrote Clayton-Matthews.
In an interview, he said the unemployment rate has hovered at about 4.9 percent for more than a year, the state has added back only 37,500 of the 207,000 jobs it shed during the recession and the housing market has lost its luster.

Blue America is stagnating.Kind of like a little European welfare state.