20-05-2025
Massachusetts unemployment rate still climbing
BOSTON (WWLP) – Massachusetts' unemployment rate climbed to 4.6% in April, climbing steadily above the national rate of 4.2%.
The joblessness rate is up .2 percentage points since March, according to federal data, while the national rate has stayed exactly the same.
This increase is not due to a lack of new jobs, but instead is because the number of people searching for jobs has greatly increased. The data shows employers added 7,700 jobs in April and 2,800 in March.
The state's economic research chief explained how he determined that more people are entering the labor force.
'We haven't seen an uptick in layoffs or new unemployment claims, meaning the uptick is being driven by more people entering the workforce and looking for work,' said Department of Economic Research Chief Economist Mark Rembert.
Since this time last year, 52,000 more people are in the workforce, and the unemployment rate is 0.7 percentage points higher. Despite the relative stability in unemployment rates, the Massachusetts Business Confidence Index is showing lower and lower confidence in local economic outlook, with just 41.5 points on a 100-point scale, down a full 14 points since January of this year, and the lowest it has been since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the survey, employers' main concerns are the impacts of Trump's tariffs, specifically on China, as they begin to see higher costs for tools and raw materials. Adding to concerns, economists at MassBenchmark have forecasted weak growth in the Bay State, as inflation continues to increase.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
