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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (3449)	12/23/1998 1:44:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17183

EMC briefly cited ... ----- Tight jobs, global slowdown hobble New England in '99 December 23, 1998 01:11 PM By Tony Munroe BOSTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - An extremely tight labor market and the world economic slowdown will likely pare back growth in New England in 1999, economists predicted. While the gross regional product is projected by Standard & Poor's DRI to close 1998 with growth of 3.5 percent, that expansion is expected to slow to 1.7 percent in the new year -- slightly below the firm's national forecast of 2.1 percent, said Chief Regional Economist Sara Johnson. "The gap reflects the difference in population growth," Johnson said, noting that New England's population is growing at 0.5 percent per year, compared with national growth of 0.9 percent. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Cathy Minehan said several regional employers have told the bank that a shortage of skilled workers -- even at the entry level -- was cutting into growth. "We've got all of the requisites for solid growth, but many industries are telling us at the Fed they can't grow because they can't find qualified workers," Minehan told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. In Massachusetts, unemployment in November was an astonishingly low 2.9 percent for November. And the Bay State wasn't alone. New Hampshire's jobless rate was 3.1 percent in November. "If you were to parachute 5,000 skilled workers into New Hampshire, they could probably be employed by this afternoon," quipped Nick Perna, chief economist at Fleet Financial Group. "They've basically run out of labor." For instance, data storage system maker EMC Corp. (EMC) of Hopkinton, Mass., is looking to hire about 1,200 people in 1999. More than a third of the fast-growing company's employees are in Massachusetts. Ken Mokler, EMC's director of worldwide recruiting, said the company must compete with other high-growth technology regions for very qualified people. "There are more jobs than there are people to fill them," he said. Office vacancy rates in Boston are low, the Fed reported in its most recent Beige Book, and speculative construction is virtually non-existent. But manufacturing in the region has slowed as a result of slackening demand from Asia, and economists predict that trend will continue into the new year. "Manufacturing is the most vulnerable sector to the foreign difficulties," said Yolanda Kordrzycki, assistant vice president and economist at the Boston Fed. New England's booming financial services industry also makes the region somewhat vulnerable to a prolonged stock market downturn, said Standard & Poor's DRI's Johnson. While most economists don't expect a national recession for 1999, they said that if a downturn occurs, New England is far better prepared than it was during the early 1990s. At that time, New England was heavily reliant on defense spending, mainframe computers and a speculative commercial real estate bubble that took down many banks when it burst. The region thus suffered longer and more deeply than the rest of the nation in that recession. New England lost 10 percent of its jobs, compared with 2 percent nationally, Perna noted. The New England economy is now somewhat insulated by a vibrant technology sector and its thriving financial services industry. The region's vulnerability to recession, economists said, is in line with the nation's. "New England's destiny does not lie inside New England," said Fred Breimyer, chief economist at State Street Corp. The Fed's Kodrzycki agreed. "My sense is that what happens to the national economy is going to determine to a large degree what happens to New England over the next year," she said.