Greater Worcester unemployment rate falls to 5.7%, after July spike
Photo | Grant Welker
Customers and workers inside B.T.'s Fried Chicken and BBQ in Worcester.
In the Worcester metropolitan area, the unemployment rate decreased in August, falling 0.3 percentage points from July to 5.7%, according to a data release Wednesday from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This drop brings the region’s percentage of unemployed workforce back down to where it was in June, before it ticked up to 6.0% in July. It’s also significantly lower than the 8.8% of laborers unemployed in August 2020.
The Worcester metropolitan area had a total of 20,040 unemployed workers in August, a roughly 1,000-person drop from July and a 10,360 decrease from August 2020.
The region’s civilian labor force continues to grow, as well, with almost 900 more workers added from July to August. At 353,939, the Worcester area labor force has increased by 6,745 people since in the last 12 months.
Massachusetts saw similar trends, with the unemployed portion of the labor force falling from 5.7% in July to 5.4% in August. While the state’s rate was 0.3 percentage points higher than Worcester’s in August 2020, it is now 0.3 percentage points lower, potentially meaning that the Worcester region is not bouncing back from the pandemic at the same speed as the state.
Worcester had the third lowest unemployment rate of the seven metropolitan areas in Massachusetts. The Leominster-Gardner metro area, which BLS examines separately, had a higher unemployment rate than Greater Worcester in August, coming in at 6.4%, which is a drop for the Leominster-Gardner region's unemployment rate of 6.6% in July.
The number of unemployed in the state fell by 9,000 people from July to August, adding more than 1,000 people to the labor force. There are now 3.75 million people in Massachusetts’ labor force.
All the data released by BLS on Wednesday is seasonally adjusted employment statistics. Last week, with the non-seasonally adjusted data, BLS had the statewide unemployment rate lower at 5.0% in August, although that was an increase from 4.9% in July. That was the first time the Massachusetts unemployment rate rose since the coronavirus pandemic's initial month.
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