Patrick administration officials touted yesterday's jobs report, trumpeting that the state has returned to pre-recession employment levels, but the anemic 500 jobs created last month could be one indication that Massachusetts is not out of the woods yet, economists told the Herald.
Statistics for the Bay State show 18,900 jobs were created in January, compared to the 16,100 initially estimated.
Robert Nakosteen, a professor of economics and statistics at the UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management, questioned the enormous gap between the January and February jobs numbers, which are gleaned from a survey of employers.
"If the numbers are accurate, it's a strange pattern," Nakosteen told the Herald. "It's certainly not part of any trend I can imagine."
There are now 3,318,500 people working in Massachusetts, compared to 3,304,300 in April 2008, when the recession took hold here, according to the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
Last month, the state unemployment rate ticked down to 6.5 percent from 6.7 percent in January. But initial estimates show that only 500 jobs were created in February, with five of 10 sectors losing jobs.
Both Nakosteen and Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews said the Massachusetts economy has improved, but they forecast modest growth in the months ahead.
"I expect the state's economy to grow, but the growth to slow a bit because of the increase in the payroll tax and sequestration," Clayton-Matthews said, referring to the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that took effect this month.
Those cuts stand to have a greater impact here than in other states because Massachusetts receives a disproportionate amount of federal funding for research, health care and defense, Nakosteen said.
Frank Conte of the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University said the state should also be worried about the loss of 2,900 manufacturing jobs since February 2012.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Take these jobs and love it
Dengan url
http://sedangapasaja.blogspot.com/2013/03/take-these-jobs-and-love-it.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Take these jobs and love it
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar