With that in mind, here are four graphs that capture the state of markets, jobs, industry, and cost-of-living in the US, Massachusetts, and Greater Boston.
Get Trendlines
A business newsletter from Globe Columnist Larry Edelman covering the trends shaping business and the economy in Boston and beyond.
Stocks
First things first: Wall Street’s mini-meltdown on Aug. 5 hit the Nasdaq Composite — a collection of tech-focused companies — particularly hard, with the index slipping 3.4 percent from the previous business day. This is likely due to existing anxieties about whether stocks in this sector have been bullishly overvalued by the AI boom.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes also experienced routs, though less dramatic (2.6 percent and 3 percent, respectively).
The Massachusetts economy — while relatively strong — is heavy on tech and biotech, so it landed somewhere in the middle. On Monday, the closing price of the Boston Globe’s index, which tracks 25 publicly traded companies in the Bay State, sank 2.9 percent.
But, like, the other indexes, it was back in recovery mode by Tuesday, a rally that continued — with some stops and starts — through the week.
Employment
A big concern right now among investors is the job market, considered one of the strongest indicators of an impending recession.
The US added a relatively meager 114,000 jobs in July. State-specific payroll data for July won’t be released until later this month. But by the latest measures, Massachusetts companies are very much in hiring mode.
After stumbling earlier this year, Massachusetts employers added 19,000 jobs in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — an uptick of 0.51 percent from May. By comparison, the US’s bump from May to June was just 0.11 percent.
GDP
Growth in Massachusetts’ gross domestic product — the total value of all produced goods and services — outran that of the US in the second quarter of 2024, ticking up by an annualized rate of 3.3 percent from the first quarter, according to MassBenchmarks, an economic group that analyzes the state. The last time that happened was a year ago, in the second quarter of 2023.
MassBenchmarks has some theories for why that is. “In Massachusetts, this increase in growth was supported by moderate payroll employment growth, high withholding and sales taxes — which imply high wage and salary income and spending growth, low unemployment rates, and a growing labor force,” the group said in a report.
Inflation/cost-of-living
If there’s one area where Boston reliably outpaces the rest of the country, it’s the cost of living. Recent data show that’s not changing.
After months of year-over-year inflation growth in the Boston metro area staying in the 2 percent range, it began to edge up again earlier this year. The last reported measure showed prices 4 percent higher in May 2024 than they were in May 2023, compared to 3.3 percent higher for the US. The increase in Boston was primarily driven — no surprise — by exorbitant shelter costs.
It remains to be seen whether prices in Boston have abated at all over the summer; the next Consumer Price Index for the metro area is due to be released later this month.
Dana Gerber can be reached at dana.gerber@globe.com. Follow her @danagerber6.
