Added jobs knock Mass. out of worst rate in nation
Massachusetts employers reported adding 51,600 jobs in August, while the statewide unemployment rate dropped nearly 5 percentage points, bucking a two-month trend of the Bay State bearing the highest jobless rate in the country.
New preliminary jobs data released Friday by federal and state officials showed month-overmonth improvement through the late summer amid the economic chaos wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The state’s unemployment rate dropped from a revised rate of 16.2% in July to 11.3% in August, officials said. That 4.9 percentage point change was the largest decrease in the country.
Despite the improvement, Massachusetts still lagged behind the national unemployment rate of 8.4% last month. After reporting the highest unemployment rate nationwide in both June and July, Massachusetts tied with New Mexico in August for the sixth-highest rate among all states and the District of Columbia.
Almost all of the 51,600 positions added in August came in the private sector, according to data from the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. The largest gains occurred in education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and trade, transportation and utilities, while only one of the industry groups tracked, financial activities, reported losses in August.
Monthly unemployment and jobs data are based on two separate surveys. The unemployment rate comes from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics survey of households, which also produces an estimate of total employment, total unemployment and the size of the labor force. Jobs gained and industry-specific figures come from a survey of employers known as the Current Employment Statistics program.
The labor force household survey estimated total employment in Massachusetts to be 3.14 million in August, with 65,500 more people employed than in July.
According to that series, the state has added back about 290,000 jobs of the more than 870,000 jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic.