Loss of laborers hits Northeast Shift spurs reliance on immigrants

NEW YORK – In the 1990s, the Northeast lost the equivalent of the population of Connecticut and relied heavily on new immigrants to support its labor force, according to a Northeastern University study.

The Northeast’s share of the country’s population growth has declined since the 1930s, but the ’90s marked the first time the region would have had negative population growth had immigrants not moved in.

That translated into more than 2.7 million residents leaving the six New England states plus New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many of those were young, educated workers heading to the South and West.

Meanwhile, 3.1 million foreign-born immigrants moved into the Northeast, the largest surge of immigrants since the first decade of the 20th century. More immigrants moved to the South and West, but the Northeast depended most heavily on immigrants for population and work force growth.

“We had been finding more and more firms and industries where immigrant workers were the new labor supply,” said Andrew Sum, the study’s author and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. “Without new immigrants, the Northeast would never have grown at all.”

During the 1990s, more than three-quarters of the residents who left the Northeast were between ages 18 and 34, and nearly half of these young people had a bachelor’s degree or higher, Sum said. More people left when the economy was at its worst, in the early 1990s. When the economy picked up, younger skilled workers stayed. But census data from April 2000 through July 2001 shows that during the recent economic downturn, the Northeast again began losing educated young workers to other regions.

“Employers will have a hard time attracting young, well-educated workers when the economy turns,” said Sum, whose study was released earlier this month. “We’ll be very dependent on immigration for our labor supply.”

Some Northeastern states were hit harder than others: Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont gained residents, but the region’s six other states lost residents. If not for immigrants, New York would have lost one-tenth of its population.

High death rates among aging populations and declining fertility rates didn’t help the population figures. The Northeast also had the lowest birth rate in the country, with 1.44 births for every 100 residents. The West had the highest, at 1.84, and the national average was 1.6.

The population decline has led to the loss of five congressional seats and is trickling into the labor force. While educated workers are leaving the region, immigrant service agencies are scrambling for resources.

In Massachusetts, well-trained doctors with a few years’ experience often head to Southern states for better pay and affordable living standards, said Charles Welch, a psychiatrist and the president of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

“These are the people who should be the future of medicine in New England,” he said.

The state also loses about 53 percent of its medical residents and 65 percent of its fellows when they finish training, according to a Massachusetts Medical Society survey. More than 90 percent of these trained physicians called the cost of living “unfavorable.”

“They simply can’t make the math work. They can’t start a practice, buy a house, start a family and pay off their debt,” Welch said. “They have to move out of New England.”

At the same time, immigrant service agencies in Massachusetts are struggling to keep up with demand. There are 14,608 Massachusetts residents enrolled in publicly funded courses in English as a second language, and 15,467 others on waiting