Region's Share Of Young Workers Gets Smaller
For years, the fear sweeping through the state and the rest of New England was that young professionals were seeking greener pastures in other areas of the country or even overseas. However, it turns out that younger workers aren’t high-tailing it out of the region — there are simply fewer of them than in the past.
The findings come in the form of a discussion paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s New England Public Policy Center, in which it reports that a lack of growth in the young professional population — defined as 25- to 39-year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree — is consistent across all of New England.
“Back in 2007, when we started the research, the common thought had been that the reason the numbers were smaller was because a lot of young professionals were leaving the region,” said Senior Policy Analyst Heather Brome, who wrote the paper. “The surprising find is that it’s a cohort shift rather than migration that’s driving the trend.”
What that means, she said, is that the size of today’s generation of young professionals is significantly smaller than the population of young professionals living in New England in the early 1990s. In fact, the discussion paper reports that New England had 21 percent fewer young adults in 2007 than it did in 1990.(Click here to see the specific numbers behind the change.)
“We’re looking at an entirely different generation,” she said.
A Growing Concern
The fact that there’s a significantly smaller population of young professionals in Massachusetts and New England brings with it some concerns.
As Brome explains, businesses that previously have relied on a large supply of recent college graduates “may need to change the way they hire or promote or train internally.”
But it’s not just the coming generations that may be negatively affected.
“In terms of a knowledge transfer, Baby Boomers may end up working longer because there’s a smaller population working behind them,” Brome said.
Though the report suggests that change may be inevitable, it also highlighted some characteristics that bode well for New England and Massachusetts in particular.
In 1990, 31 percent of the young adults in New England held at least a bachelor’s degree compared to 24 percent across the country. In Massachusetts, that number was even higher at 35 percent. In 2007, those numbers continued to climb as 41 percent in New England held at least a bachelor’s degree, with 46 percent meeting that criteria in Massachusetts. The national average was only 30 percent.
That high concentration of young, highly skilled and educated workers is keeping Massachusetts and the rest of New England competitive, especially with other states such as North Carolina, Texas and Washington, which have seen growth in their young adult populations.
How policy makers will address a stagnating young professional population in New England, especially as it pertains to a smaller generation, is complicated, Brome said, but it could serve as a great example moving forward.
“Part of the solution is being an accommodating and welcoming place for young professionals,” Brome said.
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