A summary is below. More details are available on our State Employment Page.

January 22, 2019

Summary

• Massachusetts added 5,600 jobs and the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point to 3.3 percent in December according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

• Over the past twelve months, Massachusetts added 65,800 jobs and the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage point from 3.5 percent.

• In December, Massachusetts's private sector added 5,500 jobs and over the past twelve months, it created 66,000 jobs.

• The number of unemployed Massachusettsans fell by 3,799 in December, and over the past year, 187,372 Massachusettsans found jobs.

• Massachusetts’s labor force participation rate increased to 68.1 percent from 68 percent in December.  Since last year, the labor force participation rate rose 2.8 percentage point.

• The national unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 3.9 percent in December.  State employment and unemployment data for January is scheduled for release on March 11, 2019.  The national employment situation report for January will be released on Friday, February 1, 2019.