The 2016 employment rate in Massachusetts averaged out to 3.7 percent, a drop of 1.2 percentage points over the year before.
New England as a whole saw its unemployment rate fall to 4.1 percent in 2016, down 0.8 percentage points over the year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This drop, the largest decline in an unemployment rate in the U.S. last year, made New England one of three regions with a significantly lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country, along with the West North Central and Mountain regions.
The 2016 unemployment rates in Maine (3.9 percent), Massachusetts (3.7 percent), Vermont (3.3 percent), and New Hampshire (2.8 percent) were significantly lower than the U.S. average of 4.9 percent, while rates in Rhode Island (5.3 percent) and Connecticut (5.1 percent) were above the national average.
