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 Executive Summary

Greater Boston is often thought of as the 'hub' of an intellectual state, fueled by a knowledge-based economy. But hundreds of thousands of residents of Greater Boston know a different reality; one in which good wages, health care, reliable transportation and a quality education remain ever out of reach. The Hourglass Challenge provides a detailed statistical portrait of daily life for residents of the Greater Boston area, including the city's newest residents: immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Using a variety of different statistical indicators, the report presents a comprehensive overview of the wellbeing of the region.

This report comes at a key time. The state's political, business and community leaders are increasingly anxious about the future of the Commonwealth. With housing costs remaining out of reach and real incomes declining for the typical Massachusetts household, a growing number of residents are voting with their feet and leaving the state altogether. The Hourglass Challenge takes a hard look at the economic strains endured by too many of the region's residents.

The picture painted by this report is in many ways an ominous one. Greater Boston in 2006 is a region deeply divided: by wealth, education, race, and language. As the region has continued to shed relatively high-paid manufacturing and public sector jobs, the economy that has emerged most resembles an hourglass, with an abundance of low-wage service jobs on one end, high-wage professional jobs on the other and few jobs in the middle of the spectrum. Such polarization promises to persist well into the future. An economy that relies on the quality of its labor force to expand existing businesses, universities and hospitals—and to attract new ones—cannot grow when a significant part of that labor force cannot sustain itself.

The argument is not simply that we are witnessing a growing inequality in Greater Boston, but that there are actions we can take to correct it. This is the reason that labor and community organizations came together to create Community Labor United. This report frames CLU’s economic analysis of the region, describing the existence of the hourglass economy and how it is racialized and related to educational opportunities. It will also serve to support the organizing and public policy campaigns that will be undertaken by CLU and its partner organizations in the years to come in order to turn our hourglass economy into an equitable “football-shaped” economy.

The Hourglass Challenge is organized into four parts:

"The Changing Face of Greater Boston: A Demographic Profile" provides a brief statistical overview of the composition of the population of the Greater Boston area, as well as key components of recent population changes.

"The Hourglass Economy and its Implications for Equitable Regional Growth" examines trends in employment and wages in the Greater Boston area, including income inequality and the correlation between education and income.

"Vital Signs: A Snapshot of Housing, Health, Transportation, Education and Racial Inclusion in Greater Boston" looks at the quality of life for residents of Greater Boston based on a variety of statistical indicators.

“Next Steps Toward Building an Equitable Regional Economy in Greater Boston” concludes our report with examples of recent organizing successes, followed by recommendations on how CLU and its partners can organize and change policy for a better future.

Major findings of this report include:

Economic inequality in Greater Boston is on the rise
Greater Boston is home to a stark and widening economic divide that not only points to a precarious future for low and moderate-income families, but which also threatens the region's economic viability and political stability.

· Today, the typical Massachusetts household makes less money, after adjusting for inflation, than did a typical family in 1989.

· In the early 1980s a family in the top 20% of Boston earners had roughly the income of five poor families. Today that same family has the income of seven poor families.

· From the early 1980s to 2004, manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts fell from approximately 20 percent of total employment in the state, to approximately nine percent. That means that fewer than one in ten people are now employed in manufacturing, compared to one in five people in the early 1980s.

· The city's black and Latino residents are being left behind. Seventy-eight percent of all black students attending Boston Public Schools qualified for free or reduced price lunches, while 90 percent of Latino students qualified for the programs.

· Too many immigrants continue to struggle economically. While 6.7 percent of all Massachusetts residents live in poverty, 15.9 of immigrants live below the poverty line.

Quality of life for many Greater Boston residents is declining
In recent years, the costs of owning or renting a home in Greater Boston have soared. But housing costs aren't the only measure of a region's health. Access to health care, transportation and education also show great disparities according to the income, race and ethnicity of area residents.

· Seventy nine percent of families in Boston cannot afford to purchase a home.

· A worker in Boston would need to earn an hourly wage of $24.35 in order to pay the fair market value for a two-bedroom apartment.

· Close to 40 percent of the people served by local food banks are working but do not earn enough income to pay for food.

· Blacks and Latinos in Boston do not have the same access to health care as do the city's white residents. Whites consistently have the highest rates of access to health care. Although the rate of black residents without health insurance has dramatically decreased since 1998 (to be nearly equal to that of non-Latino whites), 15 percent of Latinos lack health insurance (compared to 6 percent of non-Latino whites). In the area of prenatal care, Latinas have better coverage than black women, but the rates remain high for both (17 percent of Latinas and 25 percent of black women in the city lack adequate prenatal care, compared to 9 percent of white women).

· Transportation costs now consume 17 percent of the average household income in the Greater Boston area. From 1990 to 2003, fares for buses and subways increased much faster than the cost-of-living and even faster than the price of gasoline.

The next (and newest) generation of Bostonians is not prepared to succeed
Higher education and skills training are virtual necessities for residents seeking a path out of poverty. Yet too many of Boston's school-age residents are priced out of the state's public higher education system, and the demand for jobs-related training far outstrips the supply of such programs. If present trends continue, Massachusetts will confront a drop in the education level of its workforce that threatens to lower personal income and reduce the state's tax base.

· One third of high school freshmen in the Boston Public School system drop out before graduation.

· Twenty one percent of Greater Boston area residents did not complete high school, 24 percent have only a high school diploma and 19 percent had some college or an Associates degree. Taken together, nearly two-thirds of the region’s residents have less than a Bachelors degree

· More than 1.1 million Massachusetts residents are in need of additional skills training that would allow them to obtain jobs that pay enough to sustain a family.

· Seventy nine percent of immigrants in the Greater Boston region speak a language other than English at home. The number of immigrants with limited English-speaking skills grew by 92,000 between 1980 and 2000.

· Waiting lists for English as a Second Language classes have increased by 24 percent in just two years, with 25,000 people currently waiting statewide. In Boston, there is a wait of up to three years for such classes.

Organizing and Policy Campaigns are the key to making a more equitable economy
The hourglass economy is not a function of how one dominant mode of production is inherently organized compared to another. It is a function of public policy. In the “old” economy, workers organized unions and supported political candidates who created the New Deal. It was organizing and public policy that created the familiar barrel shape of the postwar economy that existed until the ascendancy of deregulation, federally-sanctioned hostility to labor, and supply-side economics in the 1980s. Today, it is organizing and public policy which will lead us back to a stable, secure football-shaped equitable economy.

Efforts that can affect positive change include:
· Role of Community Leadership. Community and labor organizations have engaged in organizing campaigns in Greater Boston over the past several years that have resulted in higher wages and union rights for some low-wage workers, collective bargaining rights and rent protections for tenants, and transit equity and environmental justice for low-income bus riders.

· Working Together. Recognizing the limitations of going it alone, community and labor organizations created CLU as a resource to conduct joint organizing campaigns.

· Role of Public Leadership. Progressive mayors have shown that public leadership can play an important role in moving an equity agenda forward.

· Next Steps. Organizing solutions to the problems of the hourglass economy may be found in urban land use and procurement policies and actions. For these reasons, it is important that we pay particular attention to how land use and public contracting decisions are made in Greater Boston. Some potential campaign issues to consider:

o Equitable Distribution of Public Revenues: To prevent communities from throwing money and land at developers in vain hopes that it will pay off in long-term good jobs and tax revenue, it is essential to create a level playing field where no developer could negotiate zoning relief or win tax breaks.

o Negotiating Community Benefits Directly with Developers: It is important for community members and policymakers to use the leverage we gain when cities offer zoning variances, tax breaks and other incentives to negotiate with developers.

o Increasing Public Participation in the Decision-Making Process: It is critical to establish an open, transparent and participatory process for making economic development decisions.

o Planning and Zoning Reform: According to the American Planning Association, Massachusetts has the most antiquated zoning and land use laws in the country. The Community Planning Act (“CPA II”), which would reform Chapter 40A to address these concerns. This would allow Massachusetts’ communities to engage in meaningful planning processes that would not just affect zoning and development outcomes, but would increase the level of public input and participation in crafting these outcomes.

o Wage Standards: Wages for much of the region’s workforce lag behind the self-sufficiency standards. One way of addressing this issue is to leverage the existing procurement and regulatory authority of cities to ensure that the public sector is not participating in holding down workers’ wages. This can be achieved by utilizing tools such as wage and hour law enforcement, responsible employer and developer ordinances, and local hiring requirements.

o Lowering Barriers to Unionization: It is necessary to continue to support our partners in winning card check recognition and creating an environment in which all workers may participate in free and fair union elections without intimidation or fear of reprisals from their employers.