Central Mass. business confidence rises in December, immune to statewide trends
Photo | AIM
Massachusetts business confidence over the last 12 months
While the state’s overall business confidence fell to a 10-month low in December, Central Massachusetts businesses appear to be more optimistic than the rest of the state, despite a month of COVID-related uncertainty.
Central Massachusetts business confidence jumped to 59.8, a 3.5-point increase from the previous month, and notably higher than the state’s 56.7 average, according to a Monday release from Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
AIM partnered with the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce in November for the first-ever report on the Central Massachusetts Business Confidence Index, a 100-point scale which considers any reading over 50 as optimistic.
December’s statewide reading was 1.2 points lower than the previous month, making it the fifth consecutive month of declining confidence.
In a similar parallel, unemployment rates in the month of November looked brighter for Central Massachusetts than for the state as a whole. Massachusetts was the only state in the nation whose unemployment rate increased, reaching 5.4%, but both the Greater Worcester and Leominster-Gardner metropolitan areas saw their lowest unemployment rates in November since the pandemic began.
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