Boston Globe: Mass. job growth best since 2000
Daniel Hodge, director of the Economic and Public Policy Research group at the UMass Donahue Institute, was quoted in a Boston Globe story outlining job growth in Massachusetts. The state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reports that despite automatic federal budget cuts the Bay State added more than 55,000 jobs in 2013, with more than 10,000 of that total being added in December. 2014 saw the biggest increase in jobs since the dot-com boom of 2000.
“That’s about as good as you can expect to do,” said Hodge. “To add 55,000 jobs in a year when the federal government and sequestration providing a negative drag shows really well for the private sector in Massachusetts.”
The recent job growth numbers tell a different story than the state’s persistent unemployment rate, which slipped to 7 percent last month, from 7.1 percent in November. These figures, however, could change. The US Labor Department will release its annual revisions of state employment and unemployment data in March. In some years, those revisions have been significant.
Read article: Mass. job growth best since 2000
January 24, 2014
