The Massachusetts economy is strong and vibrant, but the state needs serious investments in its infrastructure – and transportation in particular – to support projected growth in the years ahead.

That was a major consensus to come out of a panel discussion last week among three regional chambers of commerce presidents and a Northeastern University economist at Middlesex Savings Bank’s annual Economic Outlook Breakfast.

Now in its 17th year, the bank convened James Rooney (Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce), Timothy Murray (Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce), Paul Joseph (MetroWest Chamber of Commerce) and Barry Bluestone, a professor of political economy at Northeastern. Emily Rooney, the host of WGBH-TV’s Beat the Press, kicked off the discussion by mentioning a recent honor, that of the best economy in the country, bestowed upon Massachusetts by Governing Magazine.

“Certainly, I think we have a strong economy and I think that has to do with decisions that were made over the years, investing in things [like] life sciences and biotech, green jobs and building a new sector in green jobs, the unprecedented infrastructure investment in the state that’s taken place,” Murray said. “Those are all things that prime the pump.”

And Joseph added that the state’s educational base is also an important driver of economic strength.

Bluestone threw out a few facts and figures to support that. For instance, the state has created approximately 338,000 new jobs since 2008 and boasts an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, widely considered by economists to be full employment. And wages have been rising because the labor market is tightening.

But the Greater Boston area in particular faces some serious challenges around income inequality and cost of living. For an upcoming report, Bluestone said he’d recalculated the poverty rate in Greater Boston based on the cost of living, which is 38 percent higher than the national cost of living.

“The poverty rate that the U.S. uses doesn’t control for cost of living. Once you control for that, our poverty rate in Greater Boston is actually higher than the nation’s,” Bluestone said. “And at the same time, we have twice as many people, twice as many households making over $100,000.”

In spite of those challenges, though, Greater Boston is perhaps the best positioned in the country for the types of jobs that are going to be created over the next 25 years, James Rooney said. Those are what he called “white collar-white coat” jobs, including medicine, life sciences, technology, financial services and emerging “sub-industries,” like cybersecurity.

And while Massachusetts is anticipated to add another 380,000 jobs over the next 15 years, Bluestone said the state will actually need to train an additional 1.2 million workers to keep pace with a wave of retiring Baby Boomers.

Not all of those jobs are going to require a bachelor’s degree, either. Roughly two-thirds of the labor force will need some kind of college education, but only 40 percent will need a four-year degree. A third of those future workers will be able to get “a reasonably good job” with just a high school diploma, Bluestone said.

But that leads into another major problem the Bay State is going to have to confront in the not-too-distant future: housing. Boston will undoubtedly attract a wealth of new workers in the years to come, but where to put them is another problem altogether.

“When you begin to talk about housing costs, you begin to talk about transportation, you begin to talk about a whole set of other issues and the solutions to that in dealing with the housing issue,” James Rooney said.

Boston dominates time, attention and resources, however, and other areas of the state would certainly like to be able to attract their fair share of Millennial workers, who in turn will attract employers and further economic development. Turning his sights west of Boston, Joseph then touched on an issue that’s certainly familiar to anybody commuting into the city from the outer suburbs.

“My argument for solving housing is mobility,” he said. “If we can get trains running of a European caliber and we can get people in and out of suburbia in Central and Western Massachusetts into Boston in an hour, which should be doable, then you don’t have to build massive buildings.”

Tackling infrastructure means conquering gridlock in the legislature, where real change could actually be accomplished. And while every chamber of commerce president at last Thursday’s event felt confident that Secretary Hillary Clinton pretty much has the presidency locked down, the real wild card is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who could decide to work across the aisle or play to the fringes of his support base.

The panelists expressed hope that legislators could work together once the dust settles after Nov. 8, though.

Murray said, “Everyone’s going to want something they can show they moved on, and I’m hoping it’s going to be infrastructure.”