Just for future reference: The Mayor says Boston needs more jobs (and HEFT!)
Boston’s Mayor Thomas menino is on record saying the city needs more jobs. Just remember that next time he tells you that immigration is fantastic because it brings so many badly needed workers.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino has led a series of meetings with some of the city’s A-list business leaders to figure out how to retain and increase employment in the wake of high-profile takeovers of Boston companies and significant relocations by others.
During a session this month at the Parkman House, Menino’s business residence on Beacon Hill, the group filled six easels with ideas about how to attract and keep more jobs, such as an advertising campaign extolling Boston’s business advantages, said Marsh Carter, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and former chief executive of Boston’s State Street Corp. Among others attending that meeting were David D’Alessandro, former chief executive of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., and real estate developer Joseph F. Fallon, head of Fallon Co.
”The most important thing to do is figure out to how to attract jobs and businesses today,” Menino said.
Boston’s inability to generate new jobs is a bit puzzling. We have a nice-sized local economy and some nominally solid economic anchors:
On balance, Menino said, the city’s new core sector strengths include education, healthcare, financial institutions, and technology, including the growing life-sciences sector. ”We’re one of the few cities that has several economies,” he said, adding: ”We shouldn’t be allowing Raleigh, N.C., to steal our workforce.”
Those four sectors really should be known as HEFT, our version New York City’s FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). That way we can say jargonic things like “Beantown’s economy needs more HEFT” or write punchy headlines like “Boston losing HEFT.”
Come to think of it, isn’t tourism also an important part of our local economy? Which means…
