Residential construction, weekly hours worked in manufacturing, help wanted advertising, and consumer confidence are all continuing upward trends. The only contrary signal is the number of new business incorporations. Growth is more volatile, that is, the swings in economic activity are proportionately larger in the state than in the nation. This volatility is not peculiar to Massachusetts. Regional economies are typically more specialized than the national economy, which is, after all, the sum of all its regions.
Specialization allows a region to reap the benefits of comparative advantage, but has a downside.
This happened, for example, to Southwestern energy-supplying states in the early 1980s and to the Northeast's minicomputers and mainframe makers in the late 1980s. These two points imply that although the Massachusetts economy is linked to the national economy, the two do not as a rule grow in lock-step with each other, neither in their rate of growth, nor in the timing or amplitude of their expansions or contractions. The structural changes in the state during the 1970s, with a secular long-term decline in nondurable industries such as apparel, and an offsetting growth in minicomputers and electronic components, were unique to this region. The severe national double-dip recessions of the early 1980s were relatively minor here. The state rate of growth during the 1980s outstripped the national rate.