- Starbucks’ Boston exodus has left crowded cafes and empty storefronts.
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Lahey Health began construction Monday on their new $1.68 billion Boston hospital to treat only cancer patients, the first of its kind in New England.
- France moved to impose limited curfews as it reels from the worst street violence in years.
The Massachusetts economy is strong and growing, Governor Maura Healey says.
No, the state is bringing up the rear in key economic measures, says Mike Minogue, the Republican businessman vying to upset the first-term Democrat in next month’s election.
Contradictory spins on the economy are par for the political course. The full picture is more nuanced than either Healey or Minogue will admit.
Massachusetts does have a wealthy and expanding economy built on elite health care, higher education, and life sciences sectors.
But what made the state special in the past isn’t so special anymore. Other states are catching up, a trend my colleagues and I have been chronicling in a series of stories over the past few months.
The latest: On Friday, Healey applauded new data showing that hiring is continuing to rebound after two years of losses.
- Employers added 3,500 jobs in September, according to federal data released by the state, bringing the gain for the year to 5,300 jobs.
- The labor force — the number of people with a job or actively looking for one — saw its biggest monthly increase in more than two years, a sign that more people believe jobs are available and worth taking.
- The jobless rate was unchanged at 4.3 percent, one-tenth of a percentage point above the national rate of 4.2 percent.
“We have one of the biggest and fastest-growing [economies] in the country,” a Healey spokesperson said in an email. “It’s why companies like Whoop, Hasbro, AstraZeneca, and Gillette are choosing to expand here and create jobs here.”
But: Total employment has barely grown since Healey took office, even as payrolls nationally have increased 2.8 percent.
Although the Healey administration stresses the addition of more than 16,000 jobs since September 2025, when hiring finally began to pick up steam, the gains have come largely in one sector: health services.
The state’s jobless rate in the governor’s first year averaged 3.5 percent, below the US average of 3.6 percent. This year, Massachusetts’ unemployment rate has averaged 4.5 percent compared with 4.2 percent nationally.
Under Healey, the state has mostly underperformed the nation, according to a weekly index of economic activity developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The index tracks a host of measures including unemployment claims, applications to start new businesses, and income statistics.
“Last in the nation in job growth. Last in the nation in [building] permits per person. . . . That is Maura Healey’s record,” Minogue said Friday in a statement to the Globe.
Whether Massachusetts is dead last or merely near the bottom compared with other states depends on the data you choose. But Minogue’s criticism is largely on point.
Step back: In a recently released analysis of government and private statistics, the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation ranked Massachusetts among the bottom five states in key areas including private employment growth, cost of living, domestic out-migration, and energy costs.
The state ranked in the top three in economic output per capita, average weekly wages, venture capital investments, and fourth-grade reading and math scores.
Final thought: The odds are against Minogue unseating Healey. He is a conservative supporter of President Trump, who has become an albatross around the necks of many GOP candidates this year.
But his view that Massachusetts is an economic laggard is closer to reality than Healey’s rosy outlook. She’s lucky she’s running in one of the most liberal states in the country.
“This mystery has been ongoing for 90 years, and the mystery continues.”
— Rick Pettigrew, a member of the latest expedition to come up empty in a search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane, which disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world at the equator.
Vindication verdict: A Suffolk County jury awarded $6 million in damages to ousted star scientist and former MIT professor David Sabatini, whose career imploded after he was accused by a much younger colleague of inappropriate sexual conduct in his Cambridge research lab.
Messy divorce: Former Fidelity fund manager Adam Benjamin sued the Boston company, alleging it withheld millions of dollars in pay after he left for another job.
Room with a view: Billionaire tech mogul Michael Dell is auctioning off his Millennium Tower penthouse in downtown Boston, seeking $6.5 million for the 4,110-square-foot pied-à-terre he bought for $10.9 million a decade ago.
Hi, robot: Google DeepMind, Alphabet’s artificial intelligence research and development wing, is building a robotics lab in Watertown.
Not so glam: Vietnamese workers at Massachusetts nail salons struggle with unstable pay and hazardous conditions, according to a new report by the advocacy group Massachusetts Nail Salon Project.
$1.013 trillion
— The National Retail Federation’s sales forecast for the November and December holiday season, up 4.2 percent from last year’s results.
“You Can See Everything,” the documentary about medtech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, brought in $15 million at the box office over its debut weekend — the biggest opening for a documentary since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in 2004.
The nearly three-hour film, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, has emerged as a surprise hit. It has near-perfect ratings from both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Oscar buzz has already begun.
📆 On this date in 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 508 points, or 22.6 percent — its largest daily percentage loss ever — in a stomach-churning crash that became known as “Black Monday.”
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