The Bay State’s unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent in January, hitting its lowest point since May 2008, the Baker administration said Tuesday.
January’s jobless rate dropped 0.2 percentage points from the revised December 2014 rate of 5.3 percent, according to the report from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD). The data are preliminary.
The state rate was lower than January’s national jobless rate of 5.7 percent.
During January 2015, the state gained 2,600 jobs, 800 in the private sector.
The EOLWD also reported that, over the year, the jobless rate dropped a full 1 percent from January 2014.
Between January 2014 and January 2015, the number of jobs grew by 68,000, including 56,600 in the private sector. There were job gains in all sectors except manufacturing, which lost 2,400 jobs, the EOLWD reported. The sectors with the biggest gains over the year were education and health services; professional, scientific, and business services; and trade, transportation, and utilities.
The EOLWD’s annual year-end revisions released Tuesday also indicate unemployment rates were lower in all but three months from April 2012 through December 2014 than previously published.
The January estimates show 3,409,800 Massachusetts residents were employed and 181,700 unemployed, adding up to a total labor force of 3,591,400.
