Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, 04/22/2026. It's just after 2PM, and we are here with Heather Barnett from joint fiscal office to talk about Vermont's population and demographics. So I understand you did this with House Ways and Means this morning. You're all well practiced and versed in this. So welcome, Ted. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Of course. Happy to continue the Demographics Roadshow this afternoon. So this is a slide version of an issue brief that was just published on the JFO website. So periodically, JFO takes demographics estimates reflective of July 1 of a specific year and writes them up and presents considerations and talks through some general demographic trends trends in Vermont. And so this slide deck is reflective of the data as of 07/01/2024. There are some preliminary data available for 2025, and I'll talk about those two. The other thing I will flag is because part of this work intersects with federal actions on immigration. Wanna flag again that this JFO's role in the process and obviously not making policy recommendations or anything like that. Just wanna flag that that's obviously a sensitive political subject before diving in. So the highlights. After our post pandemic swell of 4,100 people between 2020 and 2021, There were slight increases in 'twenty two and 'twenty three in our population, but then in 2024, population decreased by two fifteen people. It's the first decrease since before the pandemic in 2019. Population as of 07/01/2024, is 648,493. Even though that is a specific number, I will flag that these are population estimates. So in between, you have the decennial census every ten years, and those are going to be much more specific numbers. These annual updates are done by the American Community Survey. They're a small example. And so they do get revised time to time, particularly when new numbers come out. And so if you see things that are slightly different, it's because of the release schedule and adjustments numbers.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So Ted, I'm thinking of the 2020 census, and we were all locked down, and people were coming to Vermont to escape their New York City apartments and lots of woods. Not there's much we can do about it, but I have to say personally, I'm not feeling like I have a lot of faith in the accuracy of the I 2020 don't know if you look at other states to see how they're comparing versus what they got in 2020. Is everybody kind of crazy? There's a town near me, next to me, that's very small that said it had an increase of two fifty people. That town is so small that if two fifty people moved in, everybody would know that. So it just didn't make any sense. So it's hard to say how well do you trust this, because it's all we've got to start in 2020. Do you have any sense of if other states are also having some of those potential inaccuracies? And do you feel like now that we're using the other, like, community sense survey and all that, that we're maybe getting more accurate figures now?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Those are good questions, and I'm going to try and think through some potential responses. First, what I would say is particularly as you zoom into the town and county level, there's quite a bit of noise on the large margin of error on those estimates. And so if you're seeing two fifty people in that estimate, I would also recommend looking at the margin of error because it could be quite large, and it could be anywhere from forty, fifty people to 400 people. And that's what the census is saying, the ranges. And so that's one piece of it. Another piece is I've seen Art Wolff in the news. He's an economist at the University of Vermont who does a lot of work on this subject. And he has advanced the argument that we were picking up a lot of folks who were reporting in the 2020 census their residents in Vermont, regardless of the permanence of that residence. And that's why we might, as we're seeing kind of this last bullet, starting to see some declines. It's reflective of folks weren't necessarily sure what was happening in 2020 in terms of where they were living, where they were going to live. Vermont is, at least in the 2024 to '25 and to some extent in the 2024 data. Certainly, well, population declines In 2024 to 2025, know for sure that Vermont has kind of experienced the largest percentage decline in population. That kind of Maybe there was a bit of an overstatement and then we're regressing. I don't know. It's hard to tell. But I think there are some potential pieces in the data that indicate that that might be part

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: of the story. Thank you.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: The preliminary results for 2025, as I said, showed that between '24 25 Vermont population fell by 1,800 people approximately, and that's starting to erode the population increase that occurred right after the pandemic, if you're looking at the face of the statistics. So between those 2020 and 2025, the overall increase in population is 1,500 people. So really maybe leans towards the pandemic being kind of a one time event as opposed to a more durable trend. But that is, we will

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Got a question.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Sure.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: How do they do the estimate? What's the methodology?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I would have to dig more into this survey, it's partly So part of it is they are looking at, for example, there are different components of change that they are looking at. And so it can be anything from getting statistics from the Department of Health who's collecting vital records on births and deaths. That's a component of population change. Looking at larger data sets that may not be specific to Vermont on immigration. For example, on apportioning those to Vermont, probably there's As part of the American Community Survey, the American Community Survey is much larger than simply just where folks are living, but they're collecting that data as a part of that survey work. I will dig into the census very helpfully, publishes a much more fulsome exposition of their methodology, and I'd be happy

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: to I can I can always look I'll check AI and see what you said? Sorry.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We have a good system. I

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: don't I don't trust AI that that well yet.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: So they're not doing, like, a random sample and then using the statistics based on a normal population in order to come up with something like that. They're gathering data from a variety of sources and putting it in there?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: For the population estimates, yes. The American Community Survey itself is the methodology you described. There's a certain sample that they're drawing from Vermonters and making sure that that sample is reflective of what we know about demographics for age, sex, etcetera, being normalized. So, yes, there's a couple of different pieces that go into it, and we're making sure they all line up and present an accurate picture. So the first piece I'm going to go through is talking about net migration versus overall population change. In reporting demographic changes, you will hear people report different results. They might say a certain number of people moved to Vermont, but that's only one component of overall population change. And so this is one of my favorite. I don't know why I get so excited about it, but I do like it. This table shows, it's called components of population change. And the census does it for every state, and it breaks the overall population change into four components. You have births and deaths, which the difference between births and deaths, that net change is referred to as the natural change in population. And then you have international and domestic migration on net, and that's net migration. And so you can look, it goes under the hood to show how different aspects of demographics contributes to the headline number of change. And both in 2023 to '24, and then from 2020 to 2024, the natural change in Vermont was negative, meaning that there were unfortunately more deaths than births. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but it is reflective of post pandemic trends, and we're not an outlier here. Birth rates are declining nationally. And then

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I have a question here for you.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I think that last comment is pretty

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: It's kind of where we have to put this into perspective. I mean, I I can pick up

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: a paper or website anywhere. Was the most recent one, where people in a certain demographic were moving out, and there's negative growth in Florida after decades of at least the stereotype of people moving there. And I just wonder what that means for policy conversations overall when we say we need to, I mean, we've had some programs that say, we need to offer $10,000 for you to move here. Well, everybody's either doing that or some people are doing that or it's not effective or we think that that creates an atmosphere of thinking that we're the only ones losing population. And I just think it's really important for us to keep in mind that everybody, especially in different demographics are losing people. How would that shift our thinking about getting so enthusiastic about programs to attract people here? Strikes me as a zero sum game in the end, and that's what these numbers are showing.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: That is a good point. Think when looking at these data, it's very easy to jump to conclusions about why people are doing what they're doing in terms of where they're moving or whatever is happening. And I think the data on investigating various reasons why people move are certainly mixed. I think people talk about affordability or all sorts of considerations here. But at the end of the day, people are making lifestyle choices and what is the best fit for them holistically. So, yes, think that's a good point, it's also hard to know in evaluating certain programs like worker relocation or incentives to have people move here whether the incentive itself was really driving people's decision or whether they were going to make the change anyway. And so getting that counterfactual look is really difficult. So yes. And this was Sorry. Was also That program in particular was certainly a spirited conversation with Ways and Means this morning. Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: in terms of net migration I am first going to talk about the 2020 to 2024 data. What I thought was interesting here is that both international and domestic migration in migration to Vermont were roughly equal contributors to Vermont population change from 2020 to 2024. I think we heard a lot in the news about domestic immigration folks moving as climate refugees are moving out of cities into more rural areas, taking advantage of Vermont's clean and clean air and open spaces. And I to note that international migration also played a large role in our population increase between 2020 and 2024. The other thing I will note is between 'twenty three and 'twenty four, domestic migration was negative for the first time since the pandemic, and that really comes back to trends that were presented before the pandemic. And so it indicates, right, that maybe folks folks are moving out of Vermont and whether that's folks who moved here during the pandemic or folks who are at other stages of life deciding to move out of the state on that, we did lose people in Vermont to other states from '23 to '24. So this is a lot of words that summarizes a lot of the things I said on the previous slide. I think the key thing to note here is that because of So yeah, this is going into more specific detail and using words. I will skip to the next slide and highlight that without any in migration, either domestic or international migration, because of the decrease in natural change in population rates, so the fact that we had more deaths than births, without any sort of in migration, Vermont's population would have decreased by more than 1,700 from '23 to 24. Overall, as I mentioned, that immigration was especially important to the post pandemic spike in Vermont's population. And so the next piece, this was talking about overall trends in where people are coming from and where the headline number is moving up or down in population. The other piece is talking about the age structure in Vermont. And so this next section will talk about population change by age group. This first table shows the number of people in a variety of age groups in 2020 and then in 2024. A few notes about this table. First of all, you will note that the age groups are not all the same size, and that is first done to compare with previous issue briefs. And then second, it is reflective of more reflective of various, like, where folks are in life. So zero to 17, you're in your parents' household, you're in school. And then 18 to 24, so we can zoom into folks who are in college or recently graduated. And then 25 to 39 is starting families, early working years. 40 to 54 is kind of thinking about then 55 to 64 is folks who are later in their career. And then right at that 65, thinking about folks who are moving to retirement age.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: The eighteen to twenty four bump is not because we had a baby boom. It's because they're all at UBM.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: They're all at UBM. Exactly. The other thing I will note is that there are I will talk about the changes in these groups. The changes are reflective of a host of things. It could be the change in population, but it's also reflective between 2020 and 2024, the fact that folks, as they age, are moving to new age cohorts in that span of time. So the change isn't necessarily reflective of, particularly you'll see in between 55 and 64, in the 65 79 age group, That fifty five to sixty four decreased substantially, then 65 to 79 increases the baby boomers moving into a new age cohort. So with all of that analytical preface out of the way, during the pandemic, looking at age groups, there was a slight this is influx. There was an increase in the number of people who are either twenty five to thirty nine. That was a larger increase than folks forty to fifty four, but both groups saw an increase. And that is pandemic era immigrants. However, that increase was more than outweighed by the fact that that baby boomer generation is is moving into a later age cohort. And, yeah, for Saturday.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Mhmm. Is there a way to take I see that this is US Census Bureau.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Mhmm. Can

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: you make it so rather than being 55 to 65 I know these are traditional breakdowns. Mhmm. But is there a way to break it down to a specific age? So you can say from age 62, right? That's the end of the baby boom is is I believe this in 2026 is 62 to wherever the oldest is like 80 or 81 or whatever. Can those numbers be broken down so that you can actually say, here's the baby boom?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Can absolutely do this. And I put I move forward. We're gonna get to the this is a line graph that charts the population within each single year of age. And so you can do a bit of mental work using that chart, but it's probably easier. So the census publishes data by single year of age. And so you can do any age grouping you would like within those data add together the cohort that are represented by each single year of age. But I will absolutely get to that trick. It doesn't perfectly match, and we will talk a little bit about baby boomers. Yeah. It's not perfectly reflective of those generational terms and, yeah, in preference of

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: It just gives because it's it when we talk about things, even like new pensions, know, they're supposed to, we're supposed to stop taking, we're supposed to catch up with them in 2038 or whatever the current number is. Well, you know, that's twelve years from now, that would be when I'm 77. Where's the rest

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: of this?

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Just in terms of what is that chart going to look like when we take care of the pensions? Most of us who won't receive a pension from the state, but there will be many people who will no longer be on that chart or further down.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Right. Yeah, 2038, right? You have two components is absolutely the folks you can transfer forward by twelve years kind of our age structure and kind of rotate that around. And then, yeah, there will be some changes and maybe even dependent it's dependent on climate change, what's happening in the world, folks choosing to move here or not. Federal action, right? Well, it certainly has an impact on the age structure. So, yeah, it's kind of a you can do some work of taking a snapshot of our age structure and moving it forward, and then there's noise around the edges of that, for sure. The second piece here is birth rates have also dropped sharply during the pandemic. 2020, it really fell off when there was a lot of uncertainty in what was going on in the world. There's a rebound in 2021. However, that rebound didn't restore birth rates to what they were before the pandemic. And so, yes, those birth rates have remained subdued. There's also certainly a conversation happening that folks are waiting until later to start families. So that's a part of the explanatory piece here. Yeah, the long term decrease in birth rates have resulted in lower number of children 18. So we're gonna talk about a few different generational cohorts here. Our baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964, so folks who are between six to 74 and twenty twenty. The key piece here, and we'll see it visually, is that as folks in this cohort age, they will move into the 65 to 79 cohort beyond traditional working years. And so, there are a number of possible ramifications of that structure in terms of tax revenue collections, the type of social supports that are needed, overall this used to be, gosh, during the Biden administration, this infrastructure conversation around care and making sure folks are able to be supported in their older years. So

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I think people are working longer than sixty five, by and large. Certainly more of them that were working takes past sixty five, twenty years ago witnessed this room. Course, we're not all going

[David Yacovone (Member)]: make even money. You're not making it enough to say it.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Right. Or $0.11

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: an hour. But is there a way to get that information? So the 65 to seventy nine year old court, how many people are actually still working and paying taxes on W-two or whatever you would, maybe not all W-2s.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Outside of here still working. Yeah.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Yeah, I mean,

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: we all are in this room.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Yeah. Would be still working for themselves, so they'd be

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, but the tax department, I don't know, you probably know where to find that. But I'd be interested to know, if we make these assumptions, and yes, that's true, probably fewer people are, but I bet more people are working between 65 and 79, either because they want to or they have to, than was true twenty years ago. Interesting.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, I know, I'm sure there is data that I could find for you all. Yeah, let me do a little digging. It's a good question.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We're all little sensitive about it.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Well, I think it would be, because there's opportunities to work at home online now, especially with some of the older folks that have expertise or knowledge to

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Consulting or whatever. But it would show up in their taxes somehow, I would think.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Oh yeah, I've seen them.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Anyway, just a thought.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. And I wonder how I'll compare. I know the pandemic I saw a reporting on it, so I don't want to explode it as absolutely hardback. But I know during the pandemic, a lot of folks took the pandemic as an excuse to to leave the workforce at the end of day, and, like, start an early retirement or what have you. And so yeah. No. There's also some things

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that too. But, I mean, I'm I'm also maybe I'm a little more sensitive because there was a

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: rather

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: offensive opinion piece by a Yale professor in the New York Times yesterday that basically said that the older generation needs to move out of their homes and stop working to make room for all the young people because we've had our time, and now we should just like get out of the way. Unbelievable, unbelievable. I was floored.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Was it an economist?

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: It's gonna

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: solve the housing crisis.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh yeah, that's part of my, like never mind if there's no place for people to move to, but you know, that's across the country. This is not about Vermont. It was quite something. I will send it to you.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah. Well, I asked about economists because they don't have the greatest reputation for sensitivity always. Would say he didn't.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: He was a professor, and maybe he's an economist.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: What did say Yale? Yeah, I don't remember.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, so from 2020 to 2024, the 65 to 79 year old age cohort saw the largest percentage increase of any group, which increased by 13,500 or more than 13%. And so, putting this in context with the overall population gain, it was more than double of the population gain over that time. So, it's large impact. It is reflective of our structure and folks in the baby boomer cohort aging into that next age cohort. Next is Gen X The largest decline by age group between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four was among folks who are 55 to 64. It includes many of the younger baby boomers and older Gen Xers. And so thinking with the caveat that folks are making different decisions and we, in the presentation, say traditional working years, what is the impact as folks either move out of the full time labor force or either retire or finding part time consulting work. It's certainly a change in lifestyle. And so, yes, there's a question of how that will impact a whole host of things, but particularly income tax collections.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right. I guess that's what I was thinking, is that people are usually highest during years, and it's precisely when people are moving away. And I wonder if they're moving away for job opportunities or, you know, people that age don't necessarily have grandchildren, you know, they might, but I'm just curious about why that particular group is leaving.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes, it is a good like, it's a good question. We don't, unfortunately, have like, a exit poll to ask people, you know, if they're moving elsewhere, why are

[David Yacovone (Member)]: they doing so. We could have realtors do that.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We could. You know, it would be really great if we could have realtors do that. Collect that data because they're the ones talking to everybody.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: We had a toll booth,

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: we could just ask anybody with

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: a U Haul truck.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I gave my kid to summer camp.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Well, will see the moving line. You will see data yeah. From You've never heard from moving companies. Yes, they do provide a lot of data on how folks are moving around the country.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So, yeah, a lot of things to think through in this piece. And I will note that in the decrease in this age cohort, might be some folks who are moving elsewhere, but a big chunk of this is folks moving from the 55 to 64 age group into that 65 to 79 age group between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: I'm just curious if some of this is the result of pandemic, people who retired early, moved somewhere else, they didn't really like their job. They really didn't want to work at that. And they moved to Florida, North Carolina, somewhere else.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: There were a lot of people, I think the pandemic inspired, right, is the, oh, am I blanking on the term and the labor market. It was like the great reorganization essentially saying that the pandemic really inspired people to look at their life situation and either make a professional change or a location change. Was really a motivating event for a lot of changes in demographics. I think that's a piece of it for sure. Young and middle aged Vermonters. So there was an increase in this twenty five to thirty nine age group, and a little different from the previous age cohorts where the changes in the numbers were more reflective of folks aging between different age cohorts. This change is more likely explained by migration during the pandemic. I will show you in the chart that I've flapped on the screen, the line chart by single year of age illustrates the difference there. So I will go into more detail later on. And then this slide is talking about showing how declining birth rates are showing up in subgroups within that zero to seventeen category. And so both the number of very young children and the number of school age children dropped from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Now, isn't it kind of interesting to compare all this to what the national numbers are? Because aren't the national birth Naturally, the birth rates are dropping. Yes. We have to look at this and say, it's not just us. We're not special this way to understand that bigger context, because we, in more developed countries for a while now, the birth rates have been declining.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Exactly. And within New England traditionally has had lower birth rates compared to the rest of The United States. So this is certainly when, in the later slide in considerations, I have a thinking through what demographic population numbers might be going forward. And the birth rate is certainly that's a hard structural thing for Vermont to really impact. And there's a lot of evidence that speaks towards places that have tried to implement policy to make changes in that, not finding a lot of success. Yeah, so moving on to our single year of age chart. This really highlights graphically a lot of the changes we've been talking through in previous slides. So first, so before we get into that, the blue line, as it shows on the bottom, is the number of people in a single year of age for 2020. The green line is in 2024. And so although this is continuous, there would maybe be little dots at each specific point, you could see that both in 2020 and 2024, bursts were 5,000 ish. And so, yes, this shows a number of characteristics and changes in between 2020 and 2024. First is that our birth rate is lower in 2024 than 2020, and throughout from zero to 17 in each single year of age except for here in the middle. There are more children in a single year of age in 2020 than there was in 2024. So that's showing the long term decrease in birth rates because it flows through for a longer period of time. Then 18 to '24 is our UVM, folks going to college, so the population spikes. And then from '25 to '39, you could see 2024 move ahead of 2020. In their later 20s, lot of folks moved to Vermont and that line is higher. The reason we can kind of tease it out is there's no This bump, unlike later in the graph, there's no corresponding bump in 2020 that would just move forward, so we could see that these are new people. So later on, you could see the cohort. If you look at the graph in 2020, where my cursor is here, it almost looks like you've controls copied and pasted and just rotated the graph around by four years, essentially. So the structure of that population trend here from 2020 just moved it forward four years and it rotates and looks very similar. And so this is highlighting graphically the trends we went through in previous slides. It's a fun chart. I I like it.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. I think that's really helpful to see

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: that way. So if you wanna know, Vermont is second from the last out of 51 counting the district, you count just states, Vermont has the lowest birth rate, 41.7 according to AI. Only in the district of Columbia, 51 is less, and the highest is South Dakota, 66.7. So we got a 20 spread.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Mhmm. But naturally, overall, it's a declining birth rate.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Mhmm. Yeah.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Yes. Definitely.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: And I will find I know there's a graph certainly of declining birth rates and it's yeah. Certainly

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: a long term trend.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: This next chart shows so the last graph was single year of age. This is collapsing our population back into the age cohorts we were working with earlier, and it shows each cohort their share of Vermont's overall population. And it shows it for each single year from 2020 to 2024, the lighter is 2020. It gets darker as you move to 2024. And so in 2020, zero to seventeen year olds made up 18.5% of Vermont's population, but by 2024, it decreased to 17.4%. The next three age cohorts relatively stable over that time. However, again, with the sizable change between folks moving out of that fifty five to sixty four cohort, moving into the sixty five to seventy nine age cohort, substantial decrease in the first and then a substantial increase in the sixty five to seventy nine.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Get older.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Exactly. Is

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: better than the alternative. Exactly. Exactly.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes, it is in thinking through the demographics. There are certain parts of it that are Just like, you can't argue with the fact that people get older. I won't argue with that. Time marches on. And so, yes, there were some questions about how aspects compared to The United States. The issue brief has, if you prefer to see things visually as opposed to words, there's a chart, a bar chart that makes these comparisons. But Vermont has a lower share of children as a percentage of its overall population compared to The United States, 17.4% to 21.5% for The United States as a whole. Vermont tends to attract so it has attracted a higher percentage of young people of college age compared to The US overall. Is.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So you need keep more of them. And we do keep a fair amount. I mean, we can't expect to get a 100%, but we do keep a fair amount.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. Vermont has a smaller share of young middle aged adults compared to The US overall. And then Vermont has a higher share of folks 55 64. Only slightly higher. The much higher share should absolutely apply to the sixty five to seventy nine cohort. 70.9% of our population compared to 30.9% of The US overall in that age cohort. And then at age 80 and above, Vermont has a higher share compared to The United States.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: All that good clean air. That's right.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I've been from Florida, you're shoveling snow and whatnot. I imagine it keeps going. Exactly. Some considerations that we certainly hinted towards. The big million dollar question, one of the million dollar questions, is will population growth that happened right after the pandemic continue? Before, so a lot of them working with this issue brief, the data for 2025 hadn't started to come out yet, and so this 2024 was the first population decline since after the pandemic, and so it really is a question. It was more of a question than it still is a question of how durable was that population change after the pandemic. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, there are headwinds in each component of our demographics towards maintaining or generating any sort of population growth.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: That's a

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: fact for demographics. Hadn't really thought about that.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Unfortunately, that is just a part the puzzle there. So yes, thinking, our two components of natural change, births and deaths. Birth rate was low, remained subdued after the pandemic. As the chair mentioned, long term trends nationally of declining birth rates. So that's one piece that will, you know, year over year mean that there are fewer and fewer births, maybe. We don't know if it's going to bottom out at some point. But it certainly Then that feeds through the rest of the demographic changes. Each year it gets lower and lower, but those kids grew up, so fewer kids were in schools. That's a whole host of problems we're dealing with. Death rate is likely to stay elevated just because of the age of folks who are living here. And then there are the two points of parts of net migration, international and domestic. So a lot of folks from other states moved to Vermont after the pandemic. More recently, we're seeing that folks are now leaving Vermont to go to other states. This is reflective of trends that were present before the pandemic. Vermont Before the pandemic, roughly speaking, there was a slightly positive natural rate of change. There were more births than deaths that outweighed and some international migration outweighed a negative domestic migration rate. And so will that return continue long term? And then I have to talk about federal actions in the context of international immigration. I was looking at census data. It's not in the slide deck, but net international migration, this is talking nationwide in 2024, in migrants was 2,700,000 in 2024, and then it declined to 1,300,000 in 2025. And then the estimate from the census is that it'll be like 300,000 in 2026. And so international migration is certainly one of the sources powering Vermont population change, and so as federal actions make it harder to immigrate here, it will certainly have an impact on their statistics.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: So what's the soonest that we'll have good data to to give us a good know whether where things are gonna head to next census? Or

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: For any specific component or just

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: the overall number? Overall, each of those components.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So we have updated data for 07/01/2025, and so we'll incorporate those data into an update to this issue brief over the summer and fall. But those data are available now. And so as I showed in the first slide, from '24 to '25, Vermont lost about 1,800 people. In the specific component for, I don't remember all of them off the top of my head, but in international net migration, that piece contributed so there are about 2,000 people who moved here on net from international, from other countries In 2024 and 2025, that number was only 600. So the number is much lower in 2025. Yes, for the 2026 numbers, we won't see those probably until some point late twenty twenty six, 2027. The next consideration is thinking through how demographic changes impact state revenues. Talked a little bit about folks being in their highest earning years later in their career. So the '45, it's essentially 64 age groups paid the highest effective tax rate, 3.7%. We're doing a tax study this summer. So there's a coming update to that number.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: A ten year tax study.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: A ten year tax study.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We funded that in the budget, folks. Exactly.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Somebody has memorized the Senate's budget.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: I'm reading that then. It's in there.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah, so among the many exciting things that will be in the ten year tax study that updates this number, but it should be around the same ballpark. So as folks in the baby boomer cohort, whether they're either retiring fully or making changes, winding down their hours, changing their professional role. Income tax revenue may decline. As a result, there may be lower sales tax collections. Maybe depends on a whole host of other factors like inflation and the relative split between spending of goods and services and the economy more broadly. Generally speaking, spending for aging populations shifts away from goods and more into services, healthcare, which services aren't taxed certainly for the sales tax. So that could be a piece as well. And so thinking through how does Vermont's economy best adapt? Or DFO doesn't make policy recommendations. Policymakers are concerned about changing demographics, what are some things to think about? One is there are certainly ways to make Vermont attractive to folks living in other states, making sure there's solid infrastructure, folks are able to get health care, they have fast internet, are able to find housing, and are confident that Vermont is doing its work to withstand impacts of achieving climate.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And there's stuff to do in the town they move into, because it's not just about broadband. I had somebody who moved here that worked for me a while ago, moved from another state, said, every town would have a dance hall. Well, Well, I mean, like, there was something to do, and that's and that does become important.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Many of them do,

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: but they're for contra dances and

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, I know. But, you know, are there restaurants, are there movie theaters, are there good places to hike and ride your bike, and, you know, all the stuff that people want to do in their lives and with their kids, that, that's it needs. Investing in infrastructure is more than just healthcare and broadband and housing, it's

[David Yacovone (Member)]: stuff to Having a small school?

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Stuff to do.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Okay, I digress.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Ted, can we go back one slide here where you talk about the baby groomer group continues to age out and higher earnings age groups and income revenue may fall.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I know a lot of people

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: in that age group who have been, were in the workforce at the right time when IRAs came along, and now these people are collecting or having to take the required distributions. And I'm seeing a lot of folks who are not seeing their incomes declined dramatically, maybe some, but not dramatically, it's not. I wonder if there's any data that indicates the income range in that age group, how much it is declined over time. Do we see that in income tax receipts?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I'm trying to think because I don't I will check-in with Pat because

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: But they have investment returns as well. Know, for those people who who started investing when they were in their forties or if they were or earlier.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: They to pay taxes, so it should show up.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Yes, it would show up as the taxes. I

[David Yacovone (Member)]: was looking at some of data on income tax filers, and I'm pretty sure it breaks out by age, and I was with a lot of older people, and I think about it, a lot of, not all, a lot of older people though have more discretionary income than younger people. When we were buying diapers, you consumed a lot of money on them and they're past that. You know,

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: and their houses are paid for and they aren't mortgage payments necessarily. Right, yeah, so it'd

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: be interesting to know, because at the same time, we know there are a lot of older people who are on fixed incomes. Right. But it may not be, shouldn't assume that most of them are not, don't have them, right. Because you're right, we were all, when IRAs came in, Fidelity got started. Right, and your

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: values said to you, you better invest. Oh, yeah.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: A lot of people did it. Been out

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: of trouble. I

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: just The

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: of the elder on a fixed income that is a lower income. I'm wondering how true that really is,

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: or what the range is.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I think the social security data is slightly less than 40% of seniors, their only income is social security. A large percentage. A percent of the population that's in a different situation. And because a lot of those people didn't have covered employment or couldn't afford to put into an IRA. It's not insignificant, is what I'm saying.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes, and I think in this slide, I would put an emphasis on tax revenue may decline. I think it's hard for a whole variety of reasons to understand exactly what's going happen. Know there's a lot of wealth, more broadly, that's coming into retirement age out there. So it's a good question. For sure. That's essentially Oh, I have one, this last bullet. And so there are statewide efforts to think through There's a I think it's called the State Plan on Aging, but there are holistic looks across various aspects of state government in Vermont broadly as a state and how to support aging populations and the services folks might need as they age and how communities can help more broadly. So, yes, that's you know, to to the extent where it's these these demographic changes are are happening and are occurring and, you know, planning is always a good talking about scouting earlier. So being prepared.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: About doing what earlier? Scouting?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Scouting. Yes. Like, you know, yes. That was a my poor attempt at a joke. Oh, okay. Yes. My head. Yes. Being prepared. Exactly.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Go ahead, Dave. There was some, I don't know the source, but it was reported in my local newspaper, quite reputable, that Lamoille County was identified as in the future, one of the fastest growing counties in the country because of climate change. It happened to be located in such a situation, location that would be very attractive to people who follow that type of thing. And that made me think about what are the regional differences in the state and then counter to that, it could be hard for a community to attract working age adults if you didn't have a birthing center at your local hospital. You might say, gee, Mary, maybe we shouldn't move there because we'll have to travel nearly an hour to have the baby somewhere.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: And the impact that those kinds of things have on regions of the state. I don't know if we get into the kind of micro data to look at Vermont specifically, saying where are hot or cold spots going to be and what does that matter as far as investments go, state investments.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes, so that So we do So the first piece is the hard The microdata are hard, particularly if you're taking them from the US census, because they are using a sample, they're taking a sample of the population, once you're looking at changes in population at the county level, there's a pretty large margin of error. And I playing around and seeing how far I could kind of stretch the margin of error with population changes between different counties and trying to put counties that normally don't get discussed together in the same box if you look at the margin of error and how things are changing. So I think it's hard to understand taking This work is relying 100% on The US census. And there might be other microservices of data that are helpful. But with the census, it gets hard to really tease out what's going on. The other piece is Well, Moyale County, absolutely. I know the particular study that identified it as kind of a place that's more resilient to climate change. You did? Okay. Yeah. And it certainly is a part of that conversation. One of the things I thought about in hearing the news about what was occurring out west and the type of winter they've had and whether they're going to have a huge wildfire season that is I think of, will we actually see anything in Vermont as a chain, like a butterfly chaos theory chain that ends up impacting Vermont? I will say certainly the narrative has changed with the flooding in Vermont in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four. Vermont was seen as a place that was more isolated, then it turns out that Mother Nature had other Yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Actually spoke to somebody who moved here from Montana because of wildfires. That's totally anecdotal. I really understand that. It was. Sure it is, unless we all talk to the same person.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: We had just anecdotally, we had someone who moved our area because

[David Yacovone (Member)]: of the forest fires in California.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: But the other question I have is, all of these data are sort of like aggregates. When we talk about Vermont, a lot of times we say we are the best per capita or the lowest per capita or the highest per capita. None of these are per capita. We can't change these numbers specifically and how.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Certain things, so in terms of a small state. We are absolutely.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: A small population and that gets into your micro, I mean, per capita we can have the best of something or per capita, it sort of skews the data.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So some of the things unfortunately in looking at these, and we've talked a little bit in office what we might do for this over the summer is do more of a Vermont compared to other, either within the Northeast or nationally, where we fit in on various indicators. For example, the population change in absolute number between 2425. I know for a fact that ours was the largest by percentage terms on absolute terms, because, you know, what to us feels very big is obviously in other states not a huge change at all. Vermont experienced the largest population decline in percentage terms in the country. From '24 to '25, it was more from '23 to '24, I think it was in did I write it down? Oh, so what I wrote down is Vermont's population growth since the pandemic. So in this figure, 2020 to 2024 gained 50 I'm gonna go we go. 5,400 people. So that was thirty ninth in the country in percentage terms. So yes, there certainly are some places that convert into percentages and then rank us compared to other states, and I can send some of those data sets if you'd like.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: We like data. Mhmm. Cool.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And so these other things, this is a variation of your presentation, but in the form of a formal fiscal brief. Right? So this is the same information presented differently, or is there anything in

[David Yacovone (Member)]: here that we didn't talk about?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: There are probably a few things in the issue brief that weren't covered in the slides. Probably the issue brief might have a little more context, uncertain points than what I covered here in the slides. But in terms of overall structure and a lot of the figures, they are pretty similar for sure. That figure multiple different ways of showing the information may be helpful. But More than welcome to go through the issue brief, ask me any questions you have. We will we do an issue brief general and annually to the extent we can. That's the data are published in the summer and fall. And I will also note that absolutely building on the work of Joyce Manchester did these issue briefs for a while, and she was very helpful as I was planning this and really provided a lot of good analytical work that I could build on.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: I'm not sure

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I'm just looking at the very last page of the issue brief, the back page about how can Vermont's economy best adapt. I'm not sure that was

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: That was so yes, I much abridge that for the slides. There is more detail on the

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: issue brief. Okay. So it just mentions actions that have helped us have been childcare subsidies. Yes, that's right. You did talk about the infrastructure and broadband and all of that. And then there's a four year state plan on aging, and information has gone out from Doctor. Dilbeau and the commissioner of Dale. I just got something yesterday, I think. Or maybe there's an announcement in the newspaper, in one of the news outlets, that said they're looking to do another three year plan. So they'll be looking for input. I mean, was a public thing. It wasn't about legislators having to participate. So presumably, they'll be doing that as well. Dave?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: No, I was just trying to move my finger.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: Oh, okay. I will

[David Yacovone (Member)]: lock them. Please forgive me.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Oh, I don't I just don't want to

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: say something. Representative Noise, as a matter of fact, this morning in the world office talked about how this new fan on the a team is coming out. And actually, I think he's gonna have somebody talk about it next week in the world office. Oh, good. You're interested in terms of the development of that plan. Great. Great.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: All right, any other questions for Ted?

[David Yacovone (Member)]: I just wanted to anecdotal,

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: but yes,

[David Yacovone (Member)]: and it's not certainly it's not. My son plays at a place called The Alchemist in Stowe regularly. And I I go there because it's one of the few times I can watch him with the daylight as opposed to midnight. He plays earlier in the day. I'm with you. I I make I go frequently and I meet the people that are there and I ask them where they're from. And I'm amazed by the people. They came here because, well, my kids live near here. My kids went to college and relocated and I wanna be near my grandkids. Or I came here on vacation and loved it. And I'm just, I meet people there from all over, but they settled here. Yeah. Which surprised, you know, I'm always like, wow, that's great. And every time I go there, I must meet at least one or two people who are implants, which is great.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, that's great. Stow is like the highest population of second homes.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Well, that's true. So, yeah.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You're meeting some of the folks that

[David Yacovone (Member)]: Yeah, in those homes. I don't tell them that there might be a tax on them.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Stowe just asked that, there's that charter change for 2%.

[David Yacovone (Member)]: We'll see.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: All right, Mike, I'm looking at Mike on the camera here. Do you have any other questions? You youngster, you.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I'm good. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: You're in the group that needs to keep living in Vermont.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I listen. I wanna we need more

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: more than

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: that group. Well, maybe you can work on that when your travels with your work because you go around to the Northeast, so you need lots of people,

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: and you can talk under your miles.

[Unknown committee member (House Appropriations)]: I think Mike's just sitting there going, last man standing. I

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: might be here for the 200, the 300, but then these guys won't. Alright. So committee tomorrow, Ted, thank you very much. This was great. Really appreciate it. I'm sorry I missed Graham Campbell Zooming in from

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: New Zealand yesterday. Oh, listened to a bit of it. It seemed

[Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah. I was on Ways and Means when he was still in JFO before he was getting ready to move, So I got to know him there. So, Autumn, we're on tomorrow at what time? Ten. 10:00, we have a bill. S-one 73, it's a vote we have, take a look at it. I think it's pretty straightforward, as I understand. I think it's around per diems. I haven't really spent a lot of time with it. Otherwise, Mike, if you want to stay for a second, and we're going to go offline.