Population growth slowed in the Boston area last year. Experts blame the crackdown on immigration and the high cost of living.
New census estimates through last July shows the metro Boston area grew by about 12,000 people in the prior year, hovering just about 5 million people.
Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said it’s the latest demonstration of how federal immigration policy is having a local impact.
“White House policies have created an exodus in Massachusetts, especially of international immigrants, or even the desire of new immigrants to come to the U.S. — let alone Massachusetts to work, thrive and live,” Williams said. “And it’s a challenge for us because we’re a knowledge-based economy, which has been centered on attracting, retaining and growing this immigrant population.”
As domestically people continue to move out of state, the latest figures suggest that newly arriving international immigrants are no longer making up the loss.
Williams pointed to economic factors like high taxes, high housing costs and the price of health care as factors that push more people to move out of state.
“That’s the trifecta. Those three areas the state really needs to focus on if they want to retain, keep and grow a vibrant population,” he said.
Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, zoomed out to numbers that show slowing growth across the country. That national fall is also driven by immigration.
And Frost said the Census Bureau is projecting an even bigger drop. The new estimates, he pointed out, stop tracking any changes nine months ago.
“Immigration fell by that amount from July 2024 to July 2025 — which spans two different presidential administrations, right?” Frost said. “So, that’s why with the new restrictive immigration policies, the Census Bureau is projecting that the number will be even lower in the July 2025 to July 2026 data.
“Really steep decline that will, I think, be felt across the country — but especially in places like Boston and Massachusetts,” he added.
Fewer immigrants coming to the United States alaso puts the falling birth rate front and center. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the country will have more deaths that births by 2030.
“We’re looking at a future here of natural loss,” Frost said. “And if we also don’t have immigration, we’re gonna have ... potentially declining national population, which I think is pretty significant.”
