January 22, 2021
Mass. unemployment rises to 7.4%
Photo | Grant Welker
A closed former Bay State Savings Bank branch on Eastern Avenue in Worcester
After Massachusetts spent much of 2020 improving its monthly unemployment rate, that progress reversed slightly in December to end the year. The rate rose 0.7 percentage points to hit 7.4%.
The new data released Friday by the state's Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development shows the state lost a slight number of jobs in the month: about 600. That follows November's revised gain of 12,600 jobs.
Massachusetts, which for consecutive months in the middle of 2020 had the nation's worst unemployment rate, remains 335,400 jobs below the state's workforce a year prior, indicating how much the state's economy remains decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. The December unemployment rate was 0.7 percentage points above the national rate of 6.7% reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The state’s labor force participation rate – the total number of residents 16 or older who worked or were unemployed and actively sought work in the last four weeks – was up by 1.2 percentage points over the month at 64.5%. In the past year, the labor force participation rate has dropped by 3.4 percentage points.
The latest data on Friday adds to new signs that the economy, in Massachusetts and nationally, is taking a hit by coronavirus cases that have peaked soon after the holidays and by deaths that remain at record-high levels.
New unemployment claims have spiked in Massachusetts and nationally since the holidays ended, with statewide numbers hitting two-month highs and national numbers at five-month highs in mid-January.
Massachusetts saw more than 31,000 new unemployment claims filed in the week ending Jan. 9, with the sharpest upticks in both retail as well as food and accommodation.
The Worcester-area unemployment rate was 6.3% in November, the latest month available, and the Fitchburg, Leominster and Gardner area, which is measured separately, was 6.8%. Both rates are less than half of what they were at their peak in mid-2020.
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