BOSTON – The Mass. Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported preliminary estimates this month showing that Massachusetts added 1,400 jobs in May – the seventh of the last eight months the Bay State has reported growth.
Through May, Massachusetts has added 3,900 jobs in 2008, the office said in a statement. The figure comes in the face of a shrinking national job market, which has shed 324,000 jobs this year.
In 2008, solid job increases have been seen in key growth sectors of the state’s economy: education and health services and professional, scientific and business services. For the month of May, professional, scientific and business services added 700 jobs, education and health services added 400 jobs, and the governmental sector added the remaining jobs. Among the nine major, private super-sectors, five recorded job increases.
Despite the job increases, the state unemployment rate rose from 4.1 percent in April to 4.9 percent in May, after having dropped three tenths of a percentage point from March to April. •
