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Today, a look at why incomes are growing more slowly in Massachusetts than in other states. Plus: Will “Melania” put butts in seats?
➡️ The Latest
- ICE is ending its immigration enforcement surge in Maine, Senator Susan Collins said.
- Massachusetts health care systems are preparing to pause their home hospital programs as the federal government barrels toward another shutdown.
- Wall Street was roiled by a tech rout Thursday as megacaps showed no signs of easing up on artificialintelligence spending.
💵 Money matters
Watch your back, Massachusetts.
Commonwealth residents continue to earn the highest incomes in the country, but other states are closing the gap, including New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
The latest: The typical Massachusetts household earned $131,675 annually over the 2020-2024 period, a 4.1 percent increase from 2015-2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to Census Bureau statistics released Thursday.
Up in New Hampshire, the median household income rose 5.1 percent to $122,715, while down in Little Rhody, it climbed 6.2 percent to $112,375. Nationally, the gain was 5.5 percent to $99,999.
Why it matters: The income data — five-year averages from the Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey — offer both a warning about Massachusetts’ competitiveness and an explanation of why affordability is a pressing issue even in an affluent state.
Massachusetts has prospered with an economy built around highly educated and highly paid workers — medical researchers, software engineers, financial analysts, and professional services providers.
Slowing income growth relative to other states may signal that Massachusetts is losing ground. Job growth has declined and unemployment has risen as tech, life sciences, and commercial real estate come under increasing pressure. Meanwhile, steep housing, energy, and child care costs are taking an outsize bite from earnings.
All this helps explain why nearly 150,000 more people left Massachusetts than arrived from other states from 2020 to 2024, according to Census survey data released earlier in the week. New Hampshire picked up more than 20,000 Bay State exiles in 2024, while Rhode Island added about 11,600.
The Massachusetts population grew solely from international immigration.
The big picture: What’s behind this paradox of big paychecks but slow growth?
- COVID triggered significant outmigration as city dwellers sought more space at lower prices. Massachusetts lost a lot of college-educated workers with good salaries in 2021 and 2022, according to Boston Indicators, the research group of the Boston Foundation. Far more were ages 25-44 than 65 or older.
- The state’s economy has underperformed. From 2020 to 2024, Massachusetts’ private sector per capita real gross state product — a metric that reflects economic growth — increased by 11.9 percent, trailing the national average of 13.3 percent, according to a 2025 report by the Pioneer Institute. Massachusetts was even farther behind Florida (17.2 percent), Texas (15.9 percent), and New Hampshire (14.8 percent).
- It’s simply harder for Massachusetts incomes to expand quickly because they are already so high. Arizona and Idaho, starting from much lower bases, topped the Census list of rising incomes, both increasing 11.5 percent from 2015-2019 to 2020-2024.
The bright side: Massachusetts incomes are expanding faster than those of some other wealthy states.
These include New Jersey, which saw a 1.3 percent increase, Maryland (up 1.1 percent), and Connecticut (down 0.4 percent).
However, California, Washington, and Colorado, each with median household incomes relatively close to Massachusetts, posted strong growth of 7.7 percent, 8.6 percent, and 9.3 percent, respectively.
Final thought: Massachusetts depends heavily on income tax revenue from high earners. The surcharge on incomes above $1 million alone accounted for nearly 7 percent of total tax revenues in the most recent fiscal year.
If high earners continue leaving for lower-tax states, that has implications for funding schools, transit, and the social safety net.
Governor Maura Healey and the Legislature have pushed to improve affordability by reducing short-term capital gains taxes, expanding child tax credits, raising the estate tax exemption, passing a $5 billion housing bond bill, and boosting spending on child care.
On the competitiveness front, she signed the Mass Leads Act to boost climate tech and life sciences, shifted to single-sales-factor corporate tax apportionment, and proposed energy reforms.
But with other states hot on Massachusetts’ heels, there is a lot more that needs to be done.
My thanks to the Globe’s Daigo Fujiwara-Smith and Neena Hagen for compiling and analyzing the Census Bureau income data.
🎙️ On the Record
“Again, I don’t want to get into this.”
— The Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell, declining for the fourth time since the summer to say whether he would remain on the central bank’s board after his chairmanship ends on May 15.
📈 Economy
High anxiety: US consumer confidence declined sharply in January, hitting the lowest level since 2014 as Americans grow increasingly concerned about their financial prospects.
No action: The Federal Reserve pushed the pause button on its interest rate cuts Wednesday, leaving its key rate unchanged at about 3.6 percent after lowering it three times last year.
🪙 Financial Services
Crypto move: Boston-based Fidelity Investments is launching its own stablecoin, a digital asset designed to maintain a consistent price, often pegged one-to-one to the US dollar.
Calling it quits: Will Danoff, the world’s most prolific solo stock-picker who generated world-beating returns during a run of more than three decades atop the Fidelity Contrafund, is set to retire at year-end.
💨 Offshore Wind
Blown off course: GE Vernova said its wind division posted a bigger-than-expected loss of nearly $600 million in 2025 due to a government stop-work order affecting Vineyard Wind, where the Cambridge company is the lead manufacturer.
🧪 Biotech
Lab partners: Repertoire Immune Medicines of Cambridge will team up with Eli Lilly & Co. to develop autoimmune disease therapies in a deal worth $85 million upfront.
🔢 By the Numbers
$22.7 billion
— The amount allocated to MassHealth in Governor Maura Healey’s budget proposal for fiscal 2027, which represents about 36 percent of the $63.4 billion plan.
🎞️ The Closer
There was an ad on Craigslist Thursday offering Boston-area moviegoers free tickets and $50 to see the new documentary about first lady Melania Trump.
The offer — which stipulates that attendees “Must remain in seats for entirety of film” — is quite possibly a prank making fun of a film that few people in true blue Massachusetts will rush out to see. As the Globe’s Mark Shanahan reports:
“Despite President Trump’s claim that the movie is “selling out fast,” it isn’t. Moviegoers are booing the trailer in New York and LA, and the trade publication BoxOffice Pro projects opening weekend receipts of only between $1 million and $2 million. . . . As of Wednesday, no tickets were sold for Friday’s ‘Melania’ screenings at AMC Assembly Row in Somerville or AMC Causeway 13, and only two tickets were purchased for a screening at AMC Braintree 10."
That’s bad news for Amazon MGM Studios, which paid $40 million for the rights to the movie and another $35 million to market it, far more than the promotion budget for most documentaries, according to The New York Times.
Powerful people have gone out of their way to suck up to President Trump, perhaps none more outrageously than the Qatari government’s “unconditional” gift of a $400 million Boeing jet that the US is retrofitting to serve as Air Force One.
In that light, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is getting off relatively cheap.
📆 On this date in 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine” — the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car.
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Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.