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Downsizing in the local life science industry sent ripples through the Greater Boston lab market in 2023, resulting in its worst performance since 2009.

And sublease listings topped 2.8 million square feet in late 2023, an all-time record, CBRE reported in its Boston metro lab report.

While the market had 72,000 square feet of positive absorption in the fourth quarter, lab absorption totaled negative 613,000 in 2023, the worst performance since 2009. The vacancy rate hit 10.8 percent.

CBRE now is tracking 12 million square feet of local lab space under construction. Lab projects had peaked at over 16 million square feet in the past year, but construction starts have largely halted amid the market’s reversal and weak demand from the biotech sector.

“The construction pipeline for both purpose-built and converted lab space exploded in the last several years, but as demand waned over the past 18 months, many developers are left with millions of square feet of new space hitting the market unleashed,” CBRE researchers reported.

By contrast, tenants are in the market for only 1.5 million square feet of lab space, according to a report by brokerage Newmark.

Approximately 37 percent of the 5.2 million-square-foot lab market in Boston’s Seaport District is available, with another major project in 10 World Trade nearing completion in late 2024. The Seaport District vacancy rate spiked to 12.6 percent from 5.8 percent in the previous quarter, CBRE reported.

East Cambridge’s nearly 17 million-square-foot lab market had more than 343,000 square feet of negative absorption in 2023, ending the year with a 14.8 percent availability rate.

And nearly 34 percent of the lab space is available in the 11 million-square-foot Route 128 west market, which had a 17 percent vacancy rate at year end.

Venture capital funding for Boston-area biotechs declined to the lowest level since 2019 at $6.7 billion, according to data compiled by Pitchbook, but represented the fourth-highest annual total of the past two decades, Newmark researchers noted.