The Hartford Courant

March 28, 2010

Fred Carstensen

History casts a long shadow. Connecticut has a remarkable history in innovation, manufacturing and insurance. It has added new dimensions in financial services and biomedical research, and in the past 20 years saw remarkable productivity growth, well above the national average.

But this veneer of good news masks a hard reality: Connecticut — the Hartford region in particular — has been living primarily off its pre-1990 history. The history of the past 20 years casts a very different shadow — the worst jobs record in the nation, out-migration of its population, a steady deterioration in the quality of its jobs.

The urgent challenge is whether this region, and the state, will articulate and implement the policies and strategic investments needed to escape the future to which recent history points.

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