As part of our Economic Pulse series, we’re continuing our check-up on the country’s various regional economies. Today, we're looking in on New England, which comprises Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. This region of the Northeast is often characterized by traditional industries such as agriculture, commercial fishing, and forestry, but it's also home to new energy projects.

The region is known for having some of the highest electricity costs in the nation, and offshore wind had been seen as a possible solution until a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, Denmark's Orsted announced it had resumed work on a nearly complete offshore wind facility off the coast of Rhode Island following a judge's decision earlier this week. The ruling comes after the Trump administration issued a stop-work order last month.

For more on what makes New England's economy hum, “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio was joined by Lauren Saidel-Baker, an economist at the New Hampshire-based economics consultancy firm ITR Economics. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: I try not to be biased, but if I have a bias, it's I like New England because I grew up there. How are my brothers and sisters doing here as we get into autumn of 2025?

Lauren Saidel-Baker: Economically, you know, this region is interesting. New England certainly has its challenges, especially with things like affordability and housing, but also some broad economic drivers, a very strong consumer base, and those trends aren't going away.

Brancaccio: Right, and when I think of Route 128 around Boston, I think of the biomedical industry. That tends to be a driver of the New England economy.

Saidel-Baker: Biomedical is a big one. Robotics is large up here, even aerospace; we have a lot of aerospace and defense work that's being done. So it's a somewhat diverse economy. Service sector is still the biggest driver as we're watching those kind of broad metrics, but a lot of growth in that high-tech space. Those are coming in at higher growth rates, so New England will continue to benefit from that R&D-type work.

Brancaccio: What about hiring in that part of the country? I mean, we've seen and reported on the revised statistics that shows a much weaker jobs picture nationwide than we had first thought.

Saidel-Baker: Some of our population growth trends just aren't as strong as other areas of the country. So we're not seeing so much regional immigration into the New England area. But that said, it's still a somewhat tight labor market up here, starting to feel a little bit of that increased availability in labor. I don't think we will be hit as hard by things like negative net migration this year as other areas of the country that are maybe a little bit more dependent. Overall though, it doesn't feel like the bottom is falling out from our labor market, but it certainly doesn't feel as strong as it did, say, a year ago.

Brancaccio: Many Canadians were reluctant to travel to the U.S. amid border tensions and tariffs. Do you have a sense of how it played out this summer in New England?

Saidel-Baker: First of all, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine usually do get much more cross-border tourism coming in from Canada. We didn't see those numbers quite so high this year. The other impact, though, is just the reciprocal effect from the very strong COVID draw. Everyone wanted to go hiking and canoeing and do all of these wonderful outdoor activities. We're starting to see some of those trends ease up. So coming from two very different directions, but at a similar time frame, I think that is going to stress a bit of our tourism sector.

Brancaccio: Now, an engine for growth has been clean energy under the Biden administration — a lot of investment — but the Trump administration is reconsidering some permits for especially offshore wind. That I would assume is tied to a lot of jobs in the region.

Saidel-Baker: It's a tough game. Right now, there is just so much uncertainty as something is being reconsidered. But overall, we are just going to need more sources of energy in the future.