Headquarters and Jobs

If you had a chance to read Steve Syre in the Globe this morning, you know about our latest piece of research.

We continue our examination of job creation in Massachusetts by taking a look at how headquarters employment has changed. And the news is not good.

Our report, Heading Down: The Loss of Massachusetts Headquarters, details stunning job losses. On a net basis, employment at headquarters is down by over 250,000 jobs. The biggest single driver of this is contraction of headquarters, which cost close to 730,000 jobs.

The next biggest driver is the closure of headquarters, which accounts for 440,000+ job losses. A particular issue with headquarters ‘deaths’ is that headquarter births are not coming close to balancing them out, and the problem seems to have gotten worse since 2001:

This should be sobering news for state policymakers as they ponder competing pieces of economic development legislation in the midst of the worst unemployment in a generation.