Greater Worcester unemployment rises again, as rates for other Central Mass. communities are no longer provided
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Unemployment rose throughout Central Massachusetts in January.
Greater Worcester started 2025 with a higher unemployment rate than in all of 2024.
Unemployment in the region rose from 4.2% in December to 4.8% in January, marking the region’s third consecutive month of increases. January’s rate also reflected a 0.6 percentage point increase from January 2023, according to the data released Tuesday by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, using information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Typically, the EOLWD report includes statistics on four Central Massachusetts regions: Greater Worcester, Greater Framingham, Greater Athol, and the Leominster-Gardner area. However, January’s report consolidated labor markets while omitting others, accounting for the decrease in regions analyzed from the usual 24 to 12.
As a result, only Worcester’s statistics were provided, while Framingham’s were combined with other Middlesex County communities. Athol and Leominster-Gardner were omitted.
EOLWD did not provide a reason for the consolidation.
The Worcester metro area began the year with an increase in labor force, which grew by 2,488 people to 473,717 in January with 450,776 employed and 22,941 unemployed.
Greater Framingham also experienced an increase in unemployment in January as the MetroWest region’s rate grew from 3.8% in December to 4.2%. The month marked the area’s third month in a row of unemployment growth.
Instead of analyzing Greater Framingham independently in January as it usually does, the EOLWD’s latest report consolidated the Framingham region with Greater Cambridge and Greater Newton, showing the same labor statistics for all three labor markets.
The Framingham metro area’s labor force gained 7,199 people, totalling 1,407,512 in January with 1,347,916 employed and 59,596 unemployed.
The Cambridge-Newton-Framingham labor market tied for the lowest unemployment rate of the 12 regions analyzed along with the Amherst Town-Northampton and the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro areas.
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.
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