Pandemic May Accelerate Migration From Massachusetts

MASSACHUSETTS — Global Workplace Analytics, a San Diego-based consulting company, predicts between 25 and 30 percent of people will work from home two or more days per week by the end of 2021, up from just 3.6 percent before the coronavirus pandemic started.

That could be bad news for Massachusetts, where white collar workers are increasingly thinking about leaving behind the state's high income tax rates and skyrocketing housing prices now that they no longer have to commute to the office.

At the same time, Massachusetts-based companies are rethinking how much office space they need, potentially upending the state's commercial real estate market. In December, a Massachusetts Competitive Partnership survey showed 28 percent of the state's companies were considering moving jobs out of Massachusetts. A separate December survey showed 38 percent of companies considering selling off real estate in Massachusetts.

Blame remote work, which less than a year ago was seen as a temporary solution to the sudden closure of workplaces. But in the 11 months since the pandemic hit Massachusetts, companies have found workers are reporting a better work-life balance without a loss of productivity, prompting them to reconsider the need for office space.

Meanwhile, workers are starting to think about living where they want instead of living where they work. Cheaper housing, warmer weather and lower taxes could all potentially prompt those workers to leave Massachusetts. And the workers most likely to be looking to leave Massachusetts now that their work is remote are the white collar workers that have fueled the state's economy for decades, according to a report released last week by the Pioneer Institute, a conservative think tank.

"The rise of remote work may be the final push for workers and employers already fed up with the enormous costs of living and doing business that plague many coastal metropolises," the report said. "The pandemic and its repercussions have made it easier for workers of many stripes to live hundreds of miles from their office, and recent research makes the scale of this shift towards telecommuting even clearer."

Among the report's other findings:

• Before the pandemic started, just five percent of companies said that at least 40 percent of their workers were primarily working remotely. That number is expected to grow to 34 percent of companies a year after the pandemic ends.
• 74 percent of companies aid they will move at least five percent of their workforce to full-time remote work; nearly a quarter said they plan to at least 20 percent of their workforce to full-time, remote work.
• 56 percent of workers now say they would like to telecommute at least part of the time after the pandemic ends.

"As the high-opportunity places many of them choose to leave behind (think New York City or Silicon Valley) see their tax revenues dip, these economic hubs may face a reckoning over how to balance budgets or maintain core services for those who have nowhere else to go," the report concluded. "Inevitably, this means thinking deeply about the incentives and tradeoffs embedded in local, state, and federal policies for years to come."

Read the full Pioneer Institute report.

Dave Copeland writes for Patch and can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).