This column is from Trendlines, my business newsletter that covers the forces shaping the economy in Boston and beyond. If you’d like to receive it via email on Mondays and Thursdays, sign up here.

When it comes to producing new jobs, Massachusetts is putt-putt-putting along in the slow lane. We’re doing 40 miles per hour on the Pike with the hazards flashing as other states blow past.

The state’s job market is decelerating, underscoring a concern shared by many in the business community that myriad factors are eroding the state’s competitive edge. It’s not just the new millionaires tax — though there’s plenty of griping about that — but also issues that dishearten low- and middle-income residents: sky-high housing costs, unaffordable child care, and long commutes, to name a few.

The news: Massachusetts employers expanded payrolls by 27,100 jobs, an uptick of 0.7 percent, from November 2023 to November 2024, according to US Department of Labor data released on Friday. The total includes a paltry 800 jobs added last month, but at least that broke a four-month string of losses.

• In New England, only Connecticut saw a slower hiring rate (0.6 percent) over the past 12 months. In New Hampshire, jobs increased by 2.1 percent, while Rhode Island posted a 1.7 percent gain.
• Hiring rates in states that are considered key competitors outpaced Massachusetts. New York, North Carolina, and Florida were each up 1.7 percent, while Texas was up 2 percent.

A telling stat: Our state has roughly the same number of jobs as it did in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Nationally, payrolls have risen 4.6 percent.

Why it matters: Massachusetts, a graying state with high business costs and a modestly growing population, has trailed the nation’s job creation rate for much of this century.

The labor market is cooling across the country. But the expansion of remote work since the pandemic, an ever-rising cost of living, and the widening appeal of the Sun Belt states threaten to put Massachusetts even farther behind.

Meanwhile, unemployment is rising, hitting 4 percent in Massachusetts last month, the highest in three years. Massachusetts is just 0.1 percentage point below the national rate, down from a gap of 1 percentage point in May.

The big picture: The state’s economy is solid, but cracks in the foundation are becoming more visible.

• Hiring in the past year was narrowly concentrated, with two-thirds of new jobs coming from health care and more than a quarter from government.
• The leisure and hospitality sector added 5,700 jobs. But gains in hotels and restaurants were muted by the disappearance of 4,000 jobs (4.6 percent) in arts, entertainment, and recreation.
• The information sector — which includes software and Web developers, telecom engineers, and cybersecurity specialists — shed 4,100 jobs, or 4.3 percent of its total.
• Education lost 1,600 jobs, a small hit (less than 1 percent) that nonetheless doesn’t bode well for an important sector that includes beleaguered private colleges and universities.

What’s ahead: The new year may prove pivotal for the economy.

President-elect Donald Trump is seeking to pump up growth with tax cuts and deregulation.

But the Federal Reserve is treading carefully with additional interest rate cuts, worried that Trump’s agenda, which also includes steep tariffs and sharp restrictions on immigration, might fan inflation.

Whether the job market stabilizes or continues to deteriorate hinges in part on how adeptly the Fed can push inflation lower without throttling the economy.

Final thought: In Massachusetts, the hiring slowdown has coincided with a spike in the number of people entering the labor force, largely due to international immigration, both legal and illegal.

Some 73,000 residents landed work in the past year, the Labor Department data show. But the ranks of the unemployed rose by more than 29,000 to more than 153,000 — a combination of workers who were laid off, quit, or are new job-seekers.

There’s not much Governor Maura Healey and the Legislature can do about inflation and interest rates. But they can hit the gas when it comes to making Massachusetts a more attractive place to create jobs.

Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.

Gov. Maura Healey pledged that the cost of running emergency shelters housing migrants and locals would decrease from its historic levels and pushed back on conservatives who have labeled Massachusetts a “sanctuary state” harboring illegal immigrants.

In an end-of-year interview with the Herald ahead of her third year in office, Healey cast blame on the federal government for immigration issues in the Bay State, but said the expected $1 billion tab taxpayers are set to carry in each of the next several years will eventually deflate.

“It’s going to go down,” she said from inside the State House. “This is not a permanent situation, and it certainly is not sustainable, which is why I felt comfortable making the policy decisions that I have made to ratchet down the numbers.”

Only migrants who are legally allowed or paroled into the United States can access the emergency shelter system, which Healey has placed a set of increasingly restrictive changes on ever since she declared a state of emergency in August 2023 amid an influx of migrants.

The restrictions, including a 7,500 family cap on the system and limiting length of stays, appear to have had some effect. State officials reported spending less on state-run shelters in fiscal year 2024 than originally anticipated — $856 million rather than $932 million.

The cost is still above the $325 million the state has historically spent on emergency assistance shelters, which were set up under a 1980s law to house homeless families with children and pregnant women.

Arriving migrants and the money spent to take care of them have become a flashpoint on Beacon Hill, where Republicans routinely tried this year to implement residency requirements on shelters and cut back spending.

Top budget writers working for Healey are expected to ask the Legislature to approve another round of spending early in the new year to cover shelters for the remainder of fiscal year 2025. Without another injection of cash, money is expected to dry up in January, officials have said.

Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, said even though new arrivals “forced” Healey to cut shelter costs and reduce the number of families relying on state aid, that has not stopped her from asking for more dollars to fund the system.

“The cost is overwhelming,” he told the Herald in an interview this past month. “In my opinion, what cost containment looks like is reforming the amount of time that people from out of state coming into the state can stay. You want to say 30 or 60 days? Okay, that’s a good reform.”

Healey said the measures she has taken are working — though they have faced harsh criticism from some advocates — and are buoyed by the fact that 65% of families who have recently sought shelter from the state are from Massachusetts.

“We’re not a sanctuary state,” Healey said. “We have a limited budget, and the emergency shelter system really was meant for Massachusetts families who were experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity and needed a place to go that was temporary.

“We’re trying to get to that place where emergency shelter is temporary and that it’s really there just for a limited purpose for a family,” the governor added.

But even as Healey touts her changes to state-run shelters, she has started to face a wave of conservative criticism for running what Republicans say is a “sanctuary state” just as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to undertake mass deportations when he takes office next year.

The term “sanctuary state” generally refers to a state or municipality’s willingness to offer more protection to undocumented immigrants.

But just because a city or town in Massachusetts considers itself a “sanctuary” does not mean there is no federal immigration enforcement, said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of Boston University’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic.

“There are gaps between some of the statewide laws and city policies that remain vulnerable and will still feed non-citizens into ICE custody,” Stokes told the Herald.

In Massachusetts, many point to a 2017 ruling from the Supreme Judicial Court that bars state and local police from detaining a person solely on the basis of their immigration status, a decision that has since been used to prohibit interactions with federal immigration officials.

Healey said she believes “violent criminals should be deported if they’re not here lawfully” and that local, state, and federal law enforcement should work together to investigate and prosecute crimes and remove people from the country who are criminals.

But the first-term Democrat said she does not back “showing up at a hotel, and rounding up groups of people who are suspected to be here unlawfully, who are here working, and just deporting all of them without a process.”

Healey said, “I think what we need to do is work together here in Massachusetts to do both things: investigate, hold accountable, deport as necessary folks who are here unlawfully, who’ve engaged in criminal activity, absolutely, and also stand up for and protect the people who have been working here, going to school here, raising kids here, to ensure that they are not scared to go to the doctors or drop their kids off or school or go to work.”

When the state started directing SUCCESS funding to community colleges, it contributed to a 10% increase in student retention between 2022 and 2023.

Now, the hope is to see similar results at state universities by utilizing the same pot of money.

The Healey administration announced last week it will extend SUCCESS funding for the first time to the state’s nine universities — to the tune of $14 million.

The money, coming from the fiscal year 2025 budget, will support programming aimed at increasing graduation rates, particularly among historically underserved students.

According to the Department of Higher Education’s most recent data, more than 30% of state university students don’t earn a degree within six years of enrolling. For Black and Latino students, the number is more than 40%.

• Read more: Number of Black students at Harvard Law drops by over half after SCOTUS ruling

“We’ve made progress in making it more affordable for students to enroll in college, and this program will now lift barriers that arise on the way to graduation, especially for first-generation college students who cannot draw on a parent’s experience to navigate earning a degree,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.

In a similar effort, the UMass system recently announced it will offer free tuition and fee support for in-state undergraduates whose families earn $75,000 or less.

The SUCCESS expansion does not include the five UMass campuses.

The SUCCESS Fund (which stands for Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services) was created in fiscal year 2021 specifically for the state’s 15 community colleges.

The SUCCESS grants for state universities will further the initiative, enabling campuses to create new services to support vulnerable or historically underserved students, “including students of color, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and students who are low-income or first-generation to college.”

Dr. Linda Thompson, chair of the Massachusetts State Universities Council of Presidents and president at Westfield State University, said the funding expansion will help the institutions reach more students looking to advance their education.

“We are confident the funding initiatives brought by the Healey-Driscoll Administration will reach those individuals who want to stay in Massachusetts, build businesses, support our economy, and strengthen their families,” she said.

• Read more: Teaching at community colleges is getting tougher. Why do employees stay?

The dollars per university are based in part on the number of Pell Grant-eligible state university students and enrollment numbers. They are as follows:

• Bridgewater State University: $2,895,955 
• Fitchburg State University: $1,297,587 
• Framingham State University: $1,315,502 
• Massachusetts College of Art and Design: $890,286 
• Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts: $684,096 
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy: $713,536 
• Salem State University: $2,050,053 
• Westfield State University: $1,532,795 
• Worcester State University: $1,620,191 

In addition to the $14 million for state universities, the state fiscal year 2025 budget also invests $14.7 million in community colleges, for a total $28.7 million investment in SUCCESS programming.