Mass. unemployment continues to rise incrementally, hitting 5.3%
PHOTO/MATT WRIGHT
A production worker at Worcester dessert manufacturer Table Talk Pies adds fruit to the pies.
Massachusetts’ October unemployment rate was 5.3%, marking the third consecutive month of increasing unemployment, according to a Friday report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The rate plateaued at 4.9% in June and July and has risen 0.1% every month since. It is 0.7 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate of 4.6%.
While the rate is 3.2% lower than it was in October 2020 when it was 8.5%, it is still almost twice what it was in October 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. Still, the state’s decline from last year is the second-largest decrease in unemployment nationally after Tennessee, which fell 3.6%.
Massachusetts also had the third highest growth in employment, up 5.9% from last year.
Now with 3,542,800 employed, the state added 25,000 people to the workforce last month, a 0.7% jump from September. That’s also a 3.9% increase in the workforce from October 2020.
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