Mass Taxpayers Foundation warns of high costs, outmigration

The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation just published a report about important indicators and has found that, in a nutshell, Massachusetts is in trouble.Some key points:

• Working age people are leaving.

• 65+ people are moving in.

• Cost of living keeps rising.

• Lowest apartment vacancy rate in the country.

• Quality of living worsening.

• Traffic and public transit are awful.

If you live in Massachusetts, you probably know all those things individually, but to see them all together can be quite an eye-opener. Boston's traffic, for instance is the 4th worst in the world, after London, Chicago, and Paris.The counties with the highest housing prices and the worst commute times lost the most residents. The counties that gained residents (Barnstable, Dukes, Franklin, Plymouth and Hampshire) gained retirees, not working age people.However, people of all ages are leaving the state. The biggest group of leavers are those in the start of their careers, aged 26-35, just the people you want to stay in a state and raise their children there.People - workers, business owners - are moving to states where it's easier to live and do business, such as Florida, Texas, and North Carolina.Tech, which used to be a main sector of the MA economy, lost about 2,000 jobs over three years. This isn't such a big deal until you see how many tech jobs other states gained.The 65+ segment of the population reached an all-time high in 2023 and is expected to continue to climb. This means continued shrinkage of the working-age population and that the aging population will need more services but there may be no-one to perform them.The full report is available here.