After a spike during the summer, the percent of the labor force that is unemployed in the Worcester metropolitan area dipped to 5.4% in September, one of the lowest rates since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a Wednesday report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The region saw a slight upward trend in unemployment during the summer months after it fell to its pandemic low of 5.2% in May.
The September rate is a 0.2 percentage point drop from the previous month and 3.2 percentage points lower than September 2020. Still, the rate is high compared with pre-pandemic Septembers, which were 3.1% in 2019 and 3.4% in 2018.
Despite decreased unemployment, Worcester metro’s civilian labor force shrank by about 5,000 from August to September down to 348,749. This is the smallest the labor force has been since May.
The Leominster-Gardner metropolitan area saw a similar decrease in unemployment, falling from 6.4% in August to 6.1% in September. The September rate is 3.8 percentage points lower than it was a year ago.
Leominster-Gardner’s civilian labor force also dwindled last month, but by a smaller margin than Worcester, dropping from 78,286 in August to 77,864.
In total, Massachusetts lost roughly 49,500 members of the civilian labor force from August to September, but still has about 6,000 more than it did this time a year ago.
