It was a tale of two counties in terms of the employment data for 2025, as U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday show Worcester County’s employment level held steady and Middlesex County saw one of the sharpest pullbacks in the country.
Employment in Middlesex County fell 2.1%, the sharpest drop among the nine large counties in Massachusetts. Worcester was the only large county in the state to see growth, albeit 0.1%.Â
Massachusetts employment fell 0.9%, while national employment grew just 0.2%.
Only 19 large counties across the United States saw a larger decrease than Middlesex. Despite job losses, Middlesex had 901,200 jobs in December 2025, the most of any large county in the state. Worcester County had 358,200 jobs.Â
Under BLS definitions, large counties and county equivalents are those with annual average employment levels of 75,000 or more in 2024, with large counties in Massachusetts accounting for 92.7% of total employment within the state.
While Middlesex saw job losses, its average weekly wage came in at $2,293, a 5.7% increase from December 2024. This average wage puts it 10th among all large counties nationwide.
At the other end of the spectrum, Worcester County saw the slowest wage growth of any large Massachusetts county, at 3.6%. The county’s average weekly wage of $1,461 ranks it 140th among all large U.S. counties.
Massachusetts’ average weekly wage of $1,980 was second in the nation, trailing only Washington, D.C., which is treated as a state for BLS record purposes. Data from Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands are not included.Â
Middlesex County had 60,083 workplace establishments in December, up from 59,181 in 2024. Worcester County had 28,829 establishments, up from 27,946.
Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the real estate and banking & finance industries.Â
