Worcester area added 1,000 jobs in June
Office construction on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester. The Worcester area added 1,000 jobs in June, according to new state data.
The Worcester metropolitan area, which includes parts of Central Massachusetts and Connecticut, added 1,000 jobs in the month of June, according to the latest state data released Tuesday.
Most of the new jobs were in the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 1,400 positions in June. Gains in that sector, however, were offset by losses in government (900 jobs) and education and health services (700 jobs).
Of the 289,200 jobs available in the Worcester area in June, 4,200 of them were added between June 2016 and last month, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Over that time period, leisure and hospitality added 1,600 jobs and education and health services added 1,700.
The Leominster/Gardner area added just 300 jobs over the month for a total of 1,100 since June of last year.
The non-seasonally adjusted unemployment for Worcester, which reflects the employment status of people who live in the area, reached 4.6 percent in June, up from 4.4 percent in May. That same metric was 4.9 percent in Leominster/Gardner, up from 4.8 percent the month before.
The Tuesday figures reported by the state are not seasonally adjusted in order to provide job gains based on sectors, said Rena Kottcamp, director of research for the Department of Unemployment Assistance. The statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June was 4.3 percent, as reported last week.
Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Rosalin Acosta said during a stop in Worcester Wednesday that she was encourage by the latest numbers. She pointed to what she called record-high labor force numbers as encouraging and more indicative of the state's economic strides than month-to-month unemployment figures.
Acosta, who started on the job at the beginning of July, said state officials continue to work toward improving the labor-participation and workforce numbers. A continued strong economy in Massachusetts has given an opportunity to focus on workforce training, she said.
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