Massachusetts added an estimated 3,500 payroll jobs in September as more residents entered the workforce, offering a firmer reading after a weak August but also revealing uneven conditions across the state.
The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development’s September report said the monthly gain followed a revised loss of 5,600 jobs in August. Payroll employment was 16,300 higher than a year earlier, including 13,000 additional private-sector jobs, while the unemployment rate held at 4.3%.
The month’s largest sector gains were in financial activities, up 2,500 jobs; professional and business services, up 2,400; and trade, transportation and utilities, up 2,000. Because those gains exceeded the net statewide increase, they were partly offset by declines elsewhere. The report’s figures are preliminary and subject to revision.
The household side of the report also strengthened. The labor force grew by about 8,400 people—the largest monthly increase in more than two years—with roughly 7,800 more residents counted as employed and 600 more as unemployed. The labor-force participation rate rose to 65.4%, 3.6 percentage points above the national rate cited by the state.
Those measures describe related but different parts of the economy. Massachusetts’ labor-market methodology guide explains that the labor force includes people who are employed or actively seeking and available for work. Payroll jobs come from a separate employer survey, so the two series can move differently and people holding more than one job may appear more than once in payroll counts.
Fresh regional estimates released Tuesday underscore that distinction. In the state’s local labor-market report for September, unemployment rates fell from August in nine of 12 areas and rose in two. Yet all seven metropolitan areas for which payroll estimates are published lost jobs over the month. Barnstable Town, Pittsfield and Amherst Town–Northampton recorded the largest percentage declines, though the figures are not seasonally adjusted and can reflect normal late-summer changes.
Over the year, six of the seven measured metropolitan areas added jobs, led in percentage terms by Barnstable, Worcester and Pittsfield. That longer view suggests the September statewide gain was not confined to a single region, even as the monthly regional readings remained soft.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September state report put the national unemployment rate at 4.2%. It found statistically significant payroll increases in only New Jersey and South Carolina and a decline in Wisconsin; Massachusetts’ smaller gain was classified as essentially unchanged under the agency’s significance test.
The practical takeaway is measured improvement, not a surge. More Massachusetts residents were working and participating, and payrolls recovered part of August’s drop. But the regional losses and the preliminary nature of the data argue for watching whether October extends the gains when the next state report is released on November 20.
