The Globe has an article today on MassINC’s new study called Great Expectations: A Survey of Young Adults in Massachusetts. From MassINC’s site:
This groundbreaking survey represents the first of its kind for our state-and we believe the first nationally. The choices of young adults about where to live and work are critical to our state’s economic future. At the same time, as more and more regions across the country seek to build their knowledge economies, the competition for young skilled workers is growing fierce.
Others can comment on the virtues of this research while I will point out what I thought were some shortcomings:
Quibble #1 – What’s the ruckus? It doesn’t seem like such an urgent brain drain if 69% percent of the 801 respondents (age 25-39) said they thought they would still be living in Massachusetts five years from now. That sounds fairly stable to me – is it?
Quibble #2 – They asked people why they would leave Massachusetts but never asked why they stay. This was a big omission. There should have been questions like “What are the principle reasons you like living in Massachusetts or in your community?” or (for those who indicate they will remain here) “What are the reasons you think you will continue to live in Massachusetts?”
I did a quick read of the whole report (in pdf on the MassINC site) and they apparently provided no opportunity in the survey to elicit the “atmospherics” that Richard Florida and others say can attract and retain creative professional people, such as funkiness, tolerance and welcoming of diversity (racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, geekiness or other non-mainstream-ness).
Quibble #3 – If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Typical of MassINC, the survey questions focus heavily on public policy issues – jobs, taxes, cost of housing, cost of health insurance – that lend themselves to government action. Those issues are important, to be sure, but I suspect that the young adults they surveyed are not as uber-wonkish as the MassINC staff members who came up with the content of the survey questions. I’d like to have seen a broader array of aspects on how young adults feel about Massachusetts.
Mass has seen negative net migration since 2001 and various sources indicate a bulk of those fleeing are recent grads/young professionals/high-tech professionals.
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p>A few weeks ago, I spoke with the head of high-tech company who lamented that there are very few engineers who stay in the state after recieving their degree.
http://www.bos.frb.org/economi…
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p>The study concludes that the level of young professionals in NE has remained constant over the last 15 years, despite population loss of the 25-39 age group overall in NE. However, that number is increasing in other parts of the country faster than NE. So either the rest of the country is catching up, or we’re falling back. Either way we still have a high level of young professionals here as of right now.