January 5, 2021
Greater Worcester unemployment drops again, to 6.3%
Photo | Grant Welker
For-lease signs advertise available retail space at the Trolley Yard plaza in Worcester.
By Grant Welker
The Greater Worcester unemployment rate took another slight drop in November, hitting 6.3% in November, according to federal data released Tuesday.
That rate, a minor improvement from a 6.5% rate in October, brings the region's key rate for gauging unemployment far closer to its pre-coronavirus pandemic levels than where it was in the middle of last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS considers Worcester County and Connecticut's WIndham County to be the Worcester metro area.
In June, Greater Worcester hit an unemployment rate of 16.1%, one of the worst nationally at the time. Since then, it's been a steady improvement even as new unemployment claims remain at levels multitudes higher than before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
A year ago, the region's unemployment rate was 2.5%, its best rate in 20 years. Then the pandemic hit, causing unemployment to spike locally and nationally.
The Leominster, Fitchburg and Gardner area, which is broken out separately from Worcester by BLS, has likewise shown steady improvement. That area's rate, also among the nation's worst in the middle of last year, hit 6.8% in November. The area peaked at 19.2% unemployment last June.
The Worcester area ranked 258th and the Leominster area 301st out of 389 metro areas nationally in November.
Massachusetts as a whole has likewise improved, even as it, too, remains worse than average. The state had the country's worst unemployment rate in both June and July, peaking at 17.4%. That rate improved to 6.7% in November.
Nonetheless, unemployment claims continue to stand at rates multitudes higher than before the pandemic, indicating that improved unemployment rates may be a factor of people giving up looking for work, not just a better economic reality than earlier in the pandemic.
The Worcester area's employment ranks remain more than 28,000 below their levels a year ago, a drop of 8%. In the Leominster area, employment is down nearly 8,600, or almost 11%, in that time. Across Massachusetts, employment is down more than 391,000, or more than 10%.
The state's weekly new unemployment claims numbers have stood in the tens of thousands since the pandemic first hit the state and forced business closures last March. In the week ending Dec. 26, nearly 23,000 Massachusetts workers filed new unemployment claims.
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