WASHINGTON – Unemployment continued to rise in February in both the New Bedford metropolitan area and the Providence-Fall River-Warwick region despite a small month-over-month rise in the number of local jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The jobless rate in Greater Providence increased to 11.6 percent before seasonal adjustment. That represented a 0.1-percentage-point increase from January’s 11.5 percent and a 4.7-percentage-point increase from the year-ago 6.9 percent.
The Providence region’s civilian labor force (based on place of residence) rose to 699,600 workers, from January’s 697,700 and the year-ago 698,000. Non-farm payroll employment (based on place of work) rose to 542,300 from January’s 542,100 local jobs but shrank by 21,200 jobs, or 3.8 percent, compared with February 2009’s 563,500 positions.
In the New Bedford metro area, the unemployment rate rose to 12.8 percent from January’s 12.6 percent and February 2008’s 8.1 percent. The area’s civilian labor force amounted to 85,600 workers, a slight decrease from January’s 85,700 but an increase from the year-ago work force of 83,700. Employment on non-farm payrolls edged up to 63,800 positions from January’s 63,700 but shrank by 1,100 jobs, or 1.7 percent, compared with the year-ago total of 64,900 New Bedford-area jobs.
By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent before seasonal adjustment, from 8.5 in January and 5.2 percent a year ago.
Jobless rates in the nation’s 372 metropolitan areas ranged from 3.5 percent in Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, La., to 24.5 percent in El Centro, Calif., the BLS said. Fourteen metro areas recorded unemployment of at least 15 percent, while 20 posted rates of less than 5 percent.
The sharpest year-over-year increase was in Elkhart-Goshen, Ind., where unemployment rose 12.5 percentage points to 18.9 percent – the month’s third highest rate among U.S. metro areas. Twenty-seven metro areas registered year-over-year increases of 6.0 percentage points or more while another 41 saw unemployment increase by 5.0 to 5.9 percentage points.
Rhode Island’s unadjusted jobless rate of 11.4 percent was unchanged from January but was 4.5 percentage points higher than the state’s February 2008 rate of 6.9 percent, BLS data show. Massachusetts’ unadjusted rate of 8.3 percent was a 0.2-percentage-point increase from January’s 8.1 percent and a 3.4-percentage-point increase from the year-ago 4.9 percent.
After seasonal adjustment, the Ocean State saw its February unemployment rate rise to 10.5 percent – the highest level since the government changed the way such statistics are calculated in 1976 – from 10.3 percent the month before, while the Bay State’s jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from January’s 7.4 percent. (READ MORE)
Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted U.S. jobless rate surged to a 25-year high of 8.1 percent, from 7.6 percent in January and 4.8 percent a year ago. (READ MORE)
Additional information, including the latest monthly Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment report, is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics at www.bls.gov.
