WITH THE ECONOMIC and infrastructural strains of immigration a top concern nationally and in Massachusetts, a new study from Boston University offers a data-focused counterpoint. Immigrants are not only essential to many industries, the study argues, but also key to addressing both an aging US population and younger people moving from Massachusetts to more affordable states.
“Data doesn’t lie,” said Mark Williams, a professor at the BU Questrom School of Business and the study‘s primary researcher. In carrying out the project, Williams said, he wanted to “move away from the personal and leave the politics aside, to really talk about people who, economically, each time they leave are taking millions, even billions with them.”
The study joins a body of research finding that immigration produces entrepreneurs at twice the rate of the native born population, generating economic boons through startups, new jobs, revenue generated, and taxes paid.
When working on an outmigration study earlier this year, Williams said he was struck by the “silent influences” of immigration on Massachusetts economics. Especially as young adults in the 26- to 34-year-old range leave the state, mostly in favor of its New England neighbors, the new study points to immigrant inflow as “critical in countering the state’s outmigration trend.”
More than 51,000 immigrants entered Massachusetts in 2023, according to the study, offsetting the 39,000 people who moved out of the state. Overall, Massachusetts’ population is growing at about half the national average rate.
A healthy economy depends on a delicate balance of available labor, population growth, and workforce participation, Williams said. While immigrants are helping to offset outflow, Williams warns that negative economic trends could worsen if the underlying reasons people are leaving the state go unaddressed.
Massachusetts is the state with the fifth highest percentage of immigrants as a proportion of overall population, even higher than Texas, Williams notes.
In the Bay State, immigrant labor takes the economic “barbell” shape, filling both highly skilled science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) positions and lower-paid essential positions in fields like construction, health care, and agriculture. About a fifth of workers in Massachusetts are immigrants, including about 26 percent of the state’s entrepreneurs, 30 percent of STEM workers, and 16 percent of nurses.
Roughly 1.26 million immigrants live in Massachusetts, according to the study, and about 125,000 new immigrants moved to the state over the last two years. Williams also cites the American Immigrant Council estimate of about 130,300 undocumented immigrants in the state.
Immigration policy is primarily a federal matter, with states like Massachusetts feeling their emergency shelter systems creaking under demand from recent migrants, including many asylum seekers. State officials say there has been movement on immigrant work authorizations that would help those in shelters find full-time employment and cycle out of the shelter system.
The mismatch between immigrant inflow and their ability to work is an expression of “inefficiency” at the federal level, Williams said.
Immigration, Williams argues, has helped keep the state unemployment gap at historic lows. But an aging US population cliff looms, with the older population growing at the fastest rate since the late 1800s and natural birth rates dropping to record lows.
Williams describes those country-wide aging and birth rate shifts as “equivalent to climate change – significant, long-lasting, and having profound economic impacts.” The question in his mind was, “are we prepared today to make policy decisions that will reduce negative consequences of that demographic shift?”
Even as the study leaves the personal aside, Williams said in an interview that the value of immigration is indeed personal to him. His mother taught English as a second language students, and would often host them at her house. Williams grew up appreciating the “rich exchanges” that came from having people from different backgrounds around for a meal or a conversation. As a professor at BU, Williams welcomes dozens of international students to his Newton home for Thanksgiving, sharing tables and stories with his now-grown daughters.
Williams said a few “aha” moments arose while working on the recent study. A notable one involved the “immigrant echo.”
“Once the children of immigrants are here, their progress often exceeds their parents,” he said, “and that path is not just based on income, but how deep they make labor markets” by building new generations of expertise.
He noted that immigrant labor is increasing because of a widespread labor shortage, which Covid highlighted, undercutting critiques that migrants are taking jobs from the native born. Soon, Williams said, about 10 percent of workforce growth will be migration-related. Recent efforts in higher education encourage international students and migrant students to attend Massachusetts schools and stay in the state if possible.
“Thanks goodness” the state has so many foreign-born residents immigrating, Williams said. “If they were not coming in, Massachusetts would have a long-term problem.”
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