The latest Census Bureau population estimates landed last week, and Massachusetts once again finds itself near the top of an unenviable list: states losing more residents to other states than they gain. In the 12 months ending July 1, 2025, the Commonwealth experienced a net loss of more than 33,000 residents, who left for greener pastures elsewhere in the United States. That figure was higher than the year before, and it put Massachusetts behind only four other states when it comes to losing population through domestic outmigration.

I have written about this pattern multiple times over the past two decades, and the numbers keep pointing in the same direction. The underlying dynamic has proved stubbornly resistant to reassurance, spin, or wishful thinking.

Yet whenever I raise this subject, the pushback is heated. Dissenters tell me I am making too much of a transient blip, or cherry-picking data points while ignoring the larger picture. Massachusetts, critics remind me, boasts superb universities, a vibrant cultural scene, world-class hospitals, and an enviable quality of life. Some insist they would never leave — and that those who do are chasing warmer weather or a more selfish political environment.

All of which may be sincerely felt. But those arguments rest on what economists call stated preferences, which is what people say they value, endorse, or admire. What the census data capture instead are revealed preferences. Those are what people demonstrate not through words but through consequential decisions — the kind that force tradeoffs into the open.

Moving to another state is that kind of decision. It’s expensive, often disruptive, and sometimes wrenching. Few people uproot themselves lightly — certainly not by the tens of thousands, year after year — unless something important is pushing or pulling them. When they do, they are revealing their preferences far more clearly than any survey ever could.

When Bay Staters leave Massachusetts for elsewhere in the country, they are answering a simple question with their feet: Is this state worth what it costs?

It’s not only households that are doing the math. Employers are, too. Firms don’t uproot operations for fun; they do it when the cost of staying outweighs the cost of leaving. In recent months, Massachusetts has lost a string of established employers or seen facilities shut down, even as state leaders publicly celebrated them.

Curia, a firm recently lauded by the Massachusetts Legislature as a “Manufacturer of the Year,” has decided to close its Burlington plant, which will cost roughly 80 workers their jobs. SynSqor, which makes power converters, is relocating to New Hampshire. Zipcar, the car-sharing business that was born in Cambridge, just announced the demise of its Boston headquarters, with 126 employees being laid off. And Cape Cod Potato Chips is leaving Cape Cod.

These aren’t isolated anecdotes; they are decisions about capital, payroll, and future investment. When executives choose to move jobs and facilities out of the Commonwealth, they are, like migrating families, revealing their preferences about where — and under what conditions — business makes the most sense.

Massachusetts still has one important counterweight to domestic outmigration: international immigration. Even as more residents move to other states, newcomers from abroad have helped keep the Commonwealth’s population growing, if only modestly.

But that cushion is thinner than it looks. In 2025, immigration slowed, exposing the state’s underlying weakness. Without international arrivals, Massachusetts would already be losing population outright. And immigration itself is no guarantee: It fluctuates with federal policy, global conditions, and economic cycles. More to the point, it depends on Massachusetts remaining attractive to newcomers. Yet if the state’s own residents are voting with their feet, why should immigrants see something fundamentally different once they’ve secured degrees, credentials, or work experience?

The factors driving domestic outmigration — high taxes, expensive housing, regulatory burdens, unresponsive governance — don’t disappear just because newcomers arrive. A state that depends on international immigration to mask a steady exodus of its own residents isn’t solving a problem. It’s postponing a reckoning.

And that reckoning has costs. Outmigration doesn’t just shrink population; it erodes the tax base, strains public finances, and forces the state to lean harder on those who remain. It weakens political representation and dims the state’s competitive position. Eventually, the very amenities that defenders point to — world-class universities, hospitals, cultural institutions — become harder to sustain when fewer people are willing to pay the premium to live here.

For years, Massachusetts boosters have insisted that quality-of-life rankings tell the real story. But those are stated preferences. The census data, the moving vans, the shuttered facilities — those are revealed preferences, and they measure what people actually choose when forced to weigh costs against benefits. Policy makers can dismiss those choices as anomalies or distractions. But revealed preferences accumulate, and over time they deliver a verdict that becomes impossible to spin away. Massachusetts can either reckon with why so many residents and businesses keep leaving — or wait until the exodus makes the decision for them.