Massachusetts is renowned for attracting young people to our institutions of higher education. However, we are not as good at retaining them as they age. Over the past decade, net domestic outmigration for ages 25- 54 amounts to a net loss of between 20,000 – 30,000 people each year. This is a major drain on Massachusetts labor supply at a time when thousands of Baby Boomers are retiring each month. As a result, the resident labor force is projected to decline over the next ten years under a status quo scenario, hampering economic growth. High housing costs are a major factor, though not the only one. Massachusetts could stem or reverse the decline if it is able to retain more of those young adults, but it would need homes for them. This section examines the characteristics of people who moved out of Massachusetts recently and what kinds of households they formed.
In 2022, roughly 200,000 individuals moved out of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth’s many higher education opportunities attract young adults (18-24), but at every other age group Massachusetts is losing more residents than it attracts. In particular, young adults are choosing to make homes elsewhere. Massachusetts lost 13,700 residents aged 25 to 34 in 2022 and in total nearly 24,000 prime working age adults.
After leaving Massachusetts, outmigrants formed 85,000 households. Reflecting their youth, greater than half of these households were single-person households and over a quarter formed two-person households after their move. Eighty-five percent of households that moved from Massachusetts had no children under 18, over half were single and never married. Individuals who moved out of Massachusetts were well educated, and over a third had a graduate degree.
The ability to work from home appears to have contributed to the increase in outmigration from Massachusetts because Massachusetts’ occupation and industry mix meant that the workforce was able to embrace work from home opportunities more readily than other states.1 It is possible that the one-time shock of the pandemic and the widespread adoption of work from home policies contributed to the short-run increase in domestic outmigration of remote workers. Current estimates of domestic migration show that in 2024 out-migration from Massachusetts has returned to pre-pandemic levels with on net 27,500 more residents leaving Massachusetts than moving in. Policies to attract young adults and families to the Baystate will be necessary to ensure that Massachusetts continues to attract highly educated workers who are now less tethered to the location of their employer.