Good News / Bad News

Good news first.

The Entertainment Software Association says that the video game and computer industry in the Bay State grew 12.3 percent in 2006, quadruple the commonwealth's overall growth. They say that Mass. is the fifth-biggest employer of video game personnel... behind California, Washington, Texas, and New York. Average salary is $84,818.

Now, the bad news....a report from MassInc says that we're second-to-last in terms of creating new jobs. From the Globe's coverage of that report:

Even if the nation avoids a recession, a recent forecast by the New England Economic Partnership projects the state won't recover the jobs until 2012 - 11 years after the 2001 peak. That would mark the first time since at least 1940 that the state has gone more than a decade without increasing payroll employment, said Andrew Sum, director of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies and the lead author of the MassINC study.

"We should be embarrassed," Sum said. "The governor, the Legislature have to get back in there and say, 'What are we going to do to create jobs in this state.' Somebody's got to advocate for jobs here."

The erosion of manufacturing, long a ladder to the middle class, and the emergence of industries requiring specialized skills also threaten to create a "boutique economy" that rewards the highly educated and the skilled, but leaves behind broad swaths of the labor force, the study warned.