Mass. develops new tools for studying employment & wages by race, gender
Photo | WBJ File
A worker at St. Pierre Manufacturing in Worcester makes a pitching horseshoe set.
Massachusetts has developed four new dashboards to provide race-and gender-specific data on employment, unemployment, and wages.
The state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development on Friday announced the release of four equity dashboards using information from the Department of Economic Research. The dashboards will offer a centralized and accessible place to see economic data for Hispanics and Latinos, Black and African Americans, Asian Americans, and women.
For example, in July when the unemployment rate was 4.1% for everyone in the Massachusetts labor market, the rate was 6.1% for Hispanic workers, 5.4% for Black workers, and 3.8% for white workers.
In another example, the median income for Black households in Worcester County is $64,599 vs. $74,679 for Worcester County as a whole.
“The need for these resources has been emphasized in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as the pandemic’s economic impact has been inconsistent across gender, race, and ethnicity,” Rosalin Acosta, Mass. secretary of labor and workforce development, said in the Friday press release. “These dashboards will be valuable tools which will inform our work to close job and equity gaps and identify opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed.”
The four dashboards include interactive maps and charts created from statistics and data collected from public sources of information like the U.S. Census Bureau, Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The dashboards will be updated in January with new statistics and information.
“We envision these equity dashboards to be living documents that grow and develop as new data and insights emerge about the Commonwealth’s ever-changing economy,” Lisa Hemmerle, director of the Department of Economic Research, said in a press release. “Our hope is that these highly visual and interactive tools will serve all data-curious minds, policy makers, employers, education institutions, community partners, and more, across Massachusetts.”
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