New Report: Worcester Runs On Housing, Services
A new report on Worcester's economy paints a picture of a city becoming more residential and more centered on service industries like health care and education.
"Benchmarking Economic Development in Worcester: 2012," by the Worcester Regional Research Bureau finds that the service sector represents 90 percent of jobs in the city and 85 percent in Worcester County.
Employment in the city's education and health services sector has grown by more than 7,000 over the past 10 years and now represents almost 45 percent of total jobs. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector has fallen by 3,823 jobs and fallen from 10.5 percent of employment in the city to 7.1 percent. Despite the reduction in jobs, the local manufacturing sector has grown dramatically in output in recent years, as discussed in a recent WBJ story.
Jobs in professional and business services, financial activities, construction and trade, transportation and utilities have also fallen considerably.
The manufacturing work that remains in the area tends to be much more technology-based than it was for most of the 20th Century. In an introduction to the report, MassDevelopment President and CEO Marty Jones writes that the agency's recent funding deals with Advanced MicroSensors in Shrewsbury and ECI Biotech in Worcester demonstrate that "the Worcester economy features the best of a traditional sector like manufacturing but does so to develop cutting-edge products."
The service industries that dominate the Worcester economy tend to be tax-exempt. In fact, the city ranks third in Massachusetts for the largest percentage of tax-exempt property, behind Cambridge and Boston, at 21.4 percent. Four of Worcester's five biggest employers are tax-exempt organizations: UMass Memorial Health Care, University of Massachusetts Medical School, the City of Worcester and Reliant Medical Group.
The residential share of the city's tax base has been growing since the 1980s as home values grew faster than those of commercial or industrial properties. In fiscal 1984, the city's tax base was 65 percent residential. Now, it's 78 percent.
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