The Massachusetts Miracle was a period of economic growth in
during most of the 1980s. Before then, the state had been hit hard by
deindustrialization
Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry.
There are different interpre ...
and resulting
unemployment
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...
. During the Miracle, the unemployment rate fell from more than 12% in 1975 to less than 3%, which was accompanied by tax reductions and a drastic increase in personal income.
Initial growth
The growth was heavily centered in
financial services
Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...
and
high-tech industry
High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
(often driven by technology out of
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...
), and within
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and in its suburbs along
Route 128
The following highways are numbered 128:
Canada
* New Brunswick Route 128
* Ontario Highway 128 (former)
* Prince Edward Island Route 128
Costa Rica
* National Route 128
India
* National Highway 128 (India)
Japan
* Japan National Route 128 ...
. The expansion of the high tech industry along Route 128 has led to the name of the road being used as a nickname for the regional tech economy, much like
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
.
Notable companies associated with the Miracle include
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...
,
Data General
Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer ...
,
Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories was a US computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954–1963), Tewksbury, Massachusetts (1963–1976), and finally in Lowell, Massachusett ...
,
Prime Computer
Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of ...
,
Lotus Development Corporation
Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2- ...
and
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo wa ...
.
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis (; born November 3, 1933) is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history a ...
was
Governor of Massachusetts
The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the chief executive officer of the government of Massachusetts. The governor is the head of the state cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the commonwealth's military forces.
Massachusetts ...
during most of this time and attempted to take credit for the "Miracle" during
his campaign for United States President in 1988.
[Lentz, Philip (August 23, 1988)]
"Dukakis Had Help With `Massachusetts Miracle`"
''Chicago Tribune''. Retrieved September 07, 2014.
The early 1990s recession
In the early 1990s, Massachusetts, like most of the Northeast, was much more severely affected by the
early 1990s recession
The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incu ...
than the country as a whole, with the unemployment rate nearly reaching 9% by the summer of 1992. However, Massachusetts recovered from the recession faster than the rest of the Northeast, helped by the nationwide tech boom of the 1990s, and by the end of the decade the unemployment rate once again fell below 3%.
References
1980s economic history
1980s in Massachusetts
Economic booms
Economic history of Massachusetts
{{econ-hist-stub