Bay State’s jobless rate dips, strong growth forecast
Massachusetts unemployment rate dipped one tenth of a percent to 4.6 percent in September, though the state lost more than 7,000 jobs, according to jobs numbers released Thursday by the Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
The 7,100 jobs lost last month were mostly in the education and health services, trade, construction, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, the state said, adding that the Bay State has nonetheless added a total of 46,900 jobs this year.
"Massachusetts unemployment rate continues to decline. Although the state experienced job losses in September, the overall jobs picture is strong," Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Ronald Walker said in a statement.
The September state unemployment rate is below the national unemployment rate of 5.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The New England region is forecast for "the years of strongest growth" in 2015 and 2016 followed by "declining growth," according to the New England Economic Partnership fall outlook released Thursday.
The report found "significant downside risk" from the slowing Chinese economy, weakened exports caused by the strong dollar, as well as concerns about international politics and security.
The partnership's forecast, written by Northeastern University professor Alan Clayton-Matthews, predicts the state's unemployment rate will drop to 4.1 percent in 2018, with the expected slowdown in growth attributed to an aging workforce.
Clayton-Matthews said in an interview that the gross state product should be "at least" 4.6 percent in 2015, up from 3.6 percent in 2014.
Gross regional product growth is expected to peak this year at 2.8 percent, with Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont remaining the strongest New England economies, according to the report. In Massachusetts the annualized gross-domestic-product growth in the first half of the year was 5.4 percent, the report said.
The forecast predicts New England's overall growth will "dip back below the U.S. average" after 2015.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told an audience at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on Thursday morning that the economy could be back to full employment by next summer, which would trigger an increase in wage growth.
Zandi described post-recession wage growth as "pretty pedestrian" so far, and he said the economy is "absorbing the slack" of unemployed and underemployed people "pretty fast."
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