“The decline in the birth rate over the past few decades, the aging of our population, the shrinking of our workforce age population, and then the reduction in international immigrants into Massachusetts, all are somewhat troubling because it means our workforce has been and will continue to contract,” said Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed group. “I think the trends were ongoing. I think COVID exacerbated some of it.”

According to the report, the workforce-age population in Massachusetts, those ages 20 to 64, peaked at 4.18 million in 2018 and is expected to drop by 180,000 by 2030.