Boston needs more housing. The state has housing in the second and third tier cities. The state needs to encourage industry growth (and population and cultural growth) in the other cities as well as Boston.

Boston has been getting more

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:25pm.

Boston has been getting more housing... the problem is that it's mostly luxury housing for the wealthy elite.

high speed rail

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:56pm.

...from Worcester, Lowell, Springfield, Providence to Boston. Problem solved.*

* other than the funding problem.

Who said Boston gets all the jobs?

By merlinmurph on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 2:10pm.

The article was about MA, not Boston.

Doesn't need to be that high speed

By Ari O on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 10:38pm.

Lowell to Boston is 25.5 miles. Three grade crossings, mostly tangent track. In Europe, trains would run at 200 km/h and make the trip in 20 minutes.

Worcester to Boston is 44 miles. Five grade crossings, and only a few curves greater than 2˚. It would take some serious cash, but half-hour travel times between Worcester and Boston would be attainable without building a new right-of-way (that gets pricey).

Providence is 45 miles from Boston. Zero grade crossings, and most of the track is capable of handling 125 mph trains. Amtrak makes the trip in 30 minutes. The T, which refuses to run electric equipment or even spec its equipment for more than 79 mph, takes close to an hour.

(See also: Brockton, Attleboro, Lawrence, Haverhill …)

This is not rocket science.

well no

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 6:12pm.

It's TRAIN science.

but yeah, fixing the regional infrastructure, really fixing it, would be immediately beneficial for everyone around here.

Boston is my home and I love it..

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:08pm.

But it's not a very 'cool' place to live for younger folks. And I say this as someone who has every intention of moving back. After work happy hours seems to work just fine here in New York, as do laws that allow businesses to actually prosper. Boston doesn't need to reinvent the wheel to become a desirable location, just move a little closer to the 21st century and people will both stay, and come.

As a young person

By blues_lead on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:10pm.

Boston is pretty gosh darned cool.

You're probably originally

By Ahab on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:20pm.

You're probably originally not from around here. Boston needs more opportunities and jobs for anyone willing to work. Cater to yuppies? Check. Give tax breaks to corporations like GE? Check. Vote Tito.

No I'm not

By blues_lead on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 4:12pm.

I am anyone willing to work. Until I started grad school, I sold tickets, and then I was a cook. Saved money while doing both, living in the city. Opportunities and jobs. I think the city is pretty cool, as someone involved in the dance scene and closely connected to the underground music scene, art scene, and burner scene.

I am born and raised here.

By bgl on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 4:50pm.

I am born and raised here. Boston has tons of jobs and their is worker shortage in nursing, restaurants, pretty much any trade, etc.

Considering how many people

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 3:51am.

Considering how many people actually grew up here and do stay, many people local people think it's great.

If you grew up here, there's many reasons to stay. Good schools and history.

Is that why its struggling with..

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:45pm.

Keeping all those students from those colleges and universities? Again, I love Boston and will raise my future kids there. Doesn't mean it's not lacking in the cool factor.

Housing Costs

By Laura82 on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:53pm.

I think the struggle with keeping young people here has more to do with housing costs than with a "cool factor" or lack thereof.

According to the comment below yours

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 3:45pm.

NYC is the mecca and rents are no worse than they are in Boston.

SF, too.

By bgl on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 4:53pm.

SF, too.

Respectfully, you're wrong

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 4:53pm.

Massachusetts retains only one in five recent graduates who come here from out of state, compared to one in two in California and one in three in New York. Despite perceptions, Boston’s high cost of housing isn’t driving recent graduates away. Only 2 percent of recent grads surveyed by the Fed said they left Massachusetts because of high rents. Forty percent said they left to take a job or look for work.

per the Globe

Math?

By Stevil on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 8:22pm.

NY and CA are huge. What is the ratio of students to total population? Don't know, but my guess is we have a much higher ratio of grads to population or jobs which means more students have to leave to find work.

Well, when compared to NYC

By Marco on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:59pm.

how is Boston gonna look cool? NYC is the cultural center of the whole western hemisphere for cryin' out loud. So manage your expectations I guess.
As far as happy hour is concerned, when rent takes 80% of your paycheck and a 6 pack is $14 the LEAST a city can do is let happy hour happen. At least here rent takes 60% and a 6 pack is $10! hahaha

BTW there is PLENTY of really cool stuff goin down in Boston. These days you don't even have to look very hard or "ask a punk," we have the Boston Hassle!

How can it look cool?

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 3:45pm.

Easy, ease up on some of the laws from 1800 and the early 1900's. For the record, I pay the same in Manhattan as I did in Cambridge for comparable space.

You have very different

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 3:54am.

You have very different priorities than a lot of people who appreciate everything else that make places like this great to stay in.

What you are talking about things that are things that don't have as much directly to do with schools and other things of similar relevance to this place.

Is our college students learning

By EM Painter on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 2:01pm.

They are getting too much bs in their college coursework so they are not worth paying what it takes to live here.

Some of them get BA.

By erik g on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 3:57pm.

n/t

Depends on what you're

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:33pm.

Depends on what you're interested in, I guess. We have top notch universities, art museums and other cultural institutions, decent local music scene, plenty of history, good sports teams, and a well-educated, intelligent and international populace. If that's not cool to you, than maybe Miami would be a more suitable option? I would have killed to live here when I was younger if I could have afforded it.

I didn't make this up you know..

By Scauma on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 4:49pm.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/03/college-graduates-leave-...

The numbers aren't that reliable

By merlinmurph on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:31pm.

I never gave these numbers much concern. You're talking about a segment of the population that is at its most mobile moment in life graduating from college in a small state. Moving 50 miles away puts you in another state.

Numbers can be deceiving. If you read the article, the main reason is the proportion of out-of-state students MA takes in.

For Massachusetts and New England, retaining recent college graduates is a particular challenge because of the high proportion of students who come here from other states and countries, Modestino noted. Massachusetts imports about 40 percent of students from out of state — nearly 10 times the share in California and 3 times the percentage in New York.

Out-of-state students are more likely to return home after graduating to take advantage of deeper networks and stronger job opportunities, Modestino said. Nevertheless, she said, Massachusetts needs to do a better job to retain graduates.

I'm actually surprised that the import rate is as high as 40%, and am guessing that number is skewed by the number of students in the UMass system.

edit: fixed italics

Understandable so many leave, given huge proportion of them

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 3:58am.

You already posted that.

This state has a huge number of students. Keeping a large number of them would drive up the size of the state every year.

Young person here

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:51pm.

Boston is pretty cool, it's just a different flavor of cool than New York. Which is fine - more choices for everyone. I know a ton of people moving to Denver (which is blowing up) who think it's cool, though I find it lame. Again, different flavors.

It's the cost of establishing a life here that's the big deterrent. Especially in the city - and part of the appeal of being here is the city lifestyle - moving can mean first/last/security/fee, something like 3,000-4,000 to drop on housing alone. Daycare is MASSIVELY expensive, rivaling rent, especially if you're talking all day (young people have young children). Even though our wages are high, you need to have a good amount of cash on hand, or very understanding and already established friends/significant others/relatives, to get settled and get one of those high paying jobs.

We've seen how this grift plays out

By elmer fudd on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:32pm.

"We just can't get enough local skilled workers, so we need to increase the H1B quotas from the current 65,000 annually.... We NEED THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST!"

Which translates into: "We want to pay sub-standard wages to a crew of indentured servants. We'll demand they work 60-plus hours per week. They'll take it and like it because their immigration status is attached to our good will. And at the same time, we'll scare any American workers and depress their wages."

Say what you want about Jeff Sessions as AG, at least he's on the right side of the H1B issue. I'm hoping he shitcans the whole program from the jump.

It certainly can use some

By R Hookup on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:31pm.

It certainly can use some changes, but we don't want to absolute trash keeping foreign students who graduate in the US here. There is still a lot of demand in STEM that can't be met locally. The talent just gets sent overseas where they pay taxes until they have enough time to come back on an L1 visa.

The biggest abusers are the Indian body shops. That's where the focus needs to be when it comes to abuses.

That's not really accurate.

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 4:01am.

That's not really accurate. There's plenty of local graduates every year, and more grads then jobs are create in some situations.

not skilled workers, [cheap] immigrants

By EM Painter on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:59pm.

The article doesn't say skilled workers, it says immigrants.

Which might as well say cheap immigrants who will put up with our

1 confused business decisions,
2 low pay (and resulting poor living conditions),
3 non-competes so you can't bargain for a raise
4 "socially awkward" personalities.

These business roundtable types always want somebody else to do the work for them. Training? forget it. Now you're supposed to train yourself or have some foreign government train you before you immigrate.

Growth statistics are just a way for them to hide the truth in the aggregate. If they did get a bunch of cheap immigrants and the overall growth went up, it wouldn't make your life better.

??????

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 2:08pm.

"But the shortage of skilled labor is worse in New England than in the rest of the country, and experts say that shortage is slowing growth."

Everyone always wants to pay

By anon on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 3:55am.

Everyone always wants to pay less for labor. There could just be a shortage of people willing to get less pay.

Boo #@$%in hoo

By anon on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:59pm.

Sooo hard to find good help these days. This is the same pablum the chambers-of-commerce types have been spewing for years whenever they need an excuse for a gimme. "The company I'm responsible for is losing business because I don't have enough employees and my only option is to publicly kvetch about it and hope the governor does something !" How long do you think an individual saying that in earnest would keep their job ? The street knows that act.

Shortage of skilled workers could slow economic growth in Massachusetts

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