A new report by MassBio warning of tough times ahead for the state’s biotech sector rightly got a lot of attention this past week, via WBUR and the Globe, etc. But as MassBio chief executive Kendalle Burlin O’Connell told the Globe, the sector’s current woes and future challenges aren’t exactly surprising. … What I find interesting is the slow, long decline of Massachusetts’s other tech sector, i.e. the software-development sector. The BBJ recently reported that the traditional tech sector lost 8,200 jobs last year, a job loss exceeded only by California. … The rise of AI may or may not have played a major role in those 2024 job losses. But AI is expected, sooner or later, to start taking a bigger and bigger bite out of the local tech market. Take a gander at some of these headlines about the AI threat to traditional software-development jobs, jobs often filled by recent college grads. From the WSJ: “There Is Now Clearer Evidence AI Is Wrecking Young Americans’ Job Prospects.” … From the NYT: “The 1970s Gave Us Industrial Decline. A.I. Could Bring Something Worse.” … And this is my favorite headline, also via the Times: “Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.” … Not all is AI doom-and-gloom. From the WSJ: “These AI-Skilled 20-Somethings Are Making Hundreds of Thousands a Year.” But you get the idea.

My point: Massachusetts’s economy is getting squeezed on two key tech fronts these days, not just one, and I’m not sure what can be done to help them. But I do know keeping the state competitive, in terms of taxes, regulations and general cost-of-living issues, is critical. I’m not sure this has sunk in yet with our policymakers.