City Spotlight: Brockton
Pioneer Institute analyzes 16 years of data for its first City Spotlight Report, which focuses on Brockton. The report finds that the concentration of businesses in the city has been steadily increasing over the last four years, but that employment levels still haven’t returned to pre-Great Recession Levels.
What Are Pioneer’s City Spotlight Reports?
Pioneer Institute’s City Spotlight Reports focus on Massachusetts’ Gateway Cities. They aim to provide an unbiased, fact-based understanding of current economic, educational, and socioeconomic status for residents, leaders and municipal peers. Download the first report, on Brockton, Massachusetts.
The City Spotlight Reports are drawn from MassEconomix and MassAnalysis. MassEconomix is Pioneer Institute’s database that uses local, regional, and state data on employment, business, and industry trends to provide users with high-quality, timely data and facilitates an accurate understanding of Massachusetts’ state economy. MassAnalysis allows users to “benchmark” their communities with other districts in the state with a peer identifier tool.
Peer analyses are a salient tool for Massachusetts municipalities and their citizens to gauge their state-wide rankings across numerous metrics. Read the Brockton City Spotlight Report to explore Brockton’s closest peers.
Download the Report
Read the Press Release
First Pioneer Institute City Spotlight Report Shines Light on Brockton
Media inquiries: Micaela Dawson, mdawson@pioneerinstitute.org
BOSTON – The concentration of businesses in the city of Brockton has risen steadily, but employment levels still haven’t returned to pre-Great Recession levels, according to Pioneer’s Brockton City Spotlight. City Spotlights is a new product developed by Pioneer Institute using 16 years of data from its MassEconomixTM and MassAnalysisTM databases.
“Good economic policy requires an understanding of what is happening in the real economy,” said Pioneer Executive Director Jim Stergios. “For too long state and local policymakers, as well as media professionals, have worked from data that’s been drawn from a variety of sources, defined differently, and held together with chewing gum and baling wire. We aim to fix that.”
Other significant Brockton findings include:
The City Spotlights are drawn from MassEconomixTM and MassAnalysisTM.
MassEconomixTM is Pioneer Institute’s database that uses local, regional, and state data on employment, business, and industry trends to provide users with high-quality, timely data.
MassAnalysisTM allows users to “benchmark” their communities with other districts in the state with a peer identifier tool. Read the 2021 Brockton City Spotlight Report to compare trends in Brockton to those in its closest peer communities.
About the Author
Liv Leone is a research associate at Pioneer Institute. Liv’s research interests include political communication, political economy, and applied econometrics. Liv holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in political science from Boston University. Joining Pioneer in 2021, she conducts research with data from MassEconomix, and supports Pioneer’s fields of research, including taxation and regulation.
About Pioneer
Pioneer’s mission is to develop and communicate dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond. Pioneer’s vision of success is a state and nation where our people can prosper and our society thrive because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and where our government is limited, accountable and transparent. Pioneer values an America where our citizenry is well-educated and willing to test our beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas, and committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise.
About the Author
Liv Leone is a research associate at Pioneer Institute. Liv’s research interests include political communication, political economy, and applied econometrics. Liv holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in political science from Boston University. Joining Pioneer in 2021, she conducts research with data from MassEconomix, and supports Pioneer’s fields of research, including taxation and regulation. Contact her at lleone@pioneerinstitute.org
Watch: Liv Leone provides an introduction to City Spotlights & key takeaways from her debut report on Brockton:
What Are Gateway Cities?
A “Gateway” municipality (under Chapter 23A Section 3A) is a municipality with:
The following are the Gateway cities in Massachusetts.
Attleboro
Barnstable
Brockton
Chelsea
Chicopee
Everett
Fall River
Fitchburg
Haverhill
Holyoke
Lawrence
Leominster
Lowell
Lynn
Malden
Methuen
New Bedford
Peabody
Pittsfield
Quincy
Revere
Salem
Springfield
Taunton
Westfield
Worcester
What Is MassEconomix?
Welcome to MassEconomix, an online tool developed by Pioneer Institute, in partnership with the Business Dynamics Research Consortium: a project of the University of Wisconsin System, Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship.
Our goal is to provide higher quality and timely data that will facilitate the most accurate understanding of the state economy and make a more complete set of economic data accessible, to effect informed, impactful decisions. MassEconomix allows users to analyze local, regional, and state data on employment, business, and industry trends.
Watch: Introducing MassEconomix
