Worcester Ranks in Top 20 Strongest Metro Areas

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Walter Bird Jr., GoLocalWorcester Reporter

News that the Worcester metropolitan area is among the 20 strongest-recovering metros in the nation didn’t come as a big surprise to many here in the city.

The area has long been championed as being ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative practices.

“I’m not surprised,” said Kevin O’Sullivan, president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiative s (MBI). “It’s not like we just flipped the light switch on. This has been a concerted effort that started many years ago.”
Places like MBI are a big reason why the metro area has been resurging.

The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a Washington-based, nonprofit public policy organization, released the report this month. It cited the area’s high-tech industry as a major factor in helping to recover from the recession faster than many of the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.

The Worcester area was also one of just a handful to make a complete jobs recovery by the third quarter of 2011, according to the report.

“We’re seeing strength in our market right now,” said Worcester’s Chief Development Officer, Timothy McGourthy. “We’re seeing growth.”

The area’s high-tech accomplishments can be seen in ventures such as the MBI, which recently expanded with a new business incubator at 55 Union St.

“We are competing on a national basis,” McGourthy said of the area’s biomedical industry.

The National Institute of Health, he said, directs more than $200 million in funding to educational facilities such as WPI and Clark University as well as private and nonprofit biotechnical business.

The Worcester area joined other technology leaders, including Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Ogden, Utah; Portland, Oregon; Provo, Utah and San Jose, California as Top 20 recovering metropolitan areas.

Craig Blais, executive vice president and president-elect of the Worcester Business Development Corporation, said the area has managed to weather a nasty storm.

“Given the peaks and valleys in the economy,” he said, “we’ve stayed pretty stable. I think we’re founded on a solid foundation.”

That footing, he and McGourthy both acknowledged, includes a vibrant college and university scene, with schools such as WPI and Clark University, in addition to hospitals such as the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and St. Vincent’s.

“That is the strength of our community,” McGourthy said. “The strength of those institutions draws technology to us.”

Other areas of growth in the Worcester Metro area, according to the report, were in the areas of government jobs and output.

“It’s not the city government that’s increasing, I can tell you that,” Worcester’s Chief Development Officer, Timothy McGourthy said of more government jobs.

What might be included in that, he said, are things such as the recent relocation of a local FBI office to the city. There are many other agencies in the metro area, he said, where jobs may have been added.

“The city has not been expanding or adding jobs,” he said. “It’s possible that it’s federal government jobs, or government-related, but not government services.”

The area was one of only 25 of the largest metropolitan areas to gain back more than half the jobs lost between “their employment peak and their post-recession employment low point,” the report stated. It was one of only six to make a complete jobs recovery by the third quarter.

Worcester, McGourthy said, does its part to lure employees, with a total payroll of $4.8 billion.

“That creates a lot of opportunity for businesses,” he said.

The Worcester metro area wasn’t singled out for its manufacturing industry. That is an area McGourthy acknowledged has been slow to come around. Housing, also, is an area in which the report found the metro area to be lacking

“Manufacturing has stabilized,” he said. “Income levels are rising. The jobs we do have are more skilled. We’d love to see more growth.”

He singled out companies such as Saint-Gobain and Wyman-Gordon as manufacturing leaders in the area.

“We’ve got quite a bit going on in the city,” said McGourthy. “Our goal is to make sure we’ve got that trained workforce to continue growing.”