Massachusetts’ unemployment rate in June rose to 17.4%, the highest in the country, even as some companies in the state gradually reopened and rehired workers, according to federal data released Friday.
The state unemployment rate increased 0.8 points from May’s revised mark of 16.6%, which had been a record high. Massachusetts was one of the five states in which unemployment rates increased in June; rates decreased in another 42.
The national unemployment rate is 11.1%.
Massachusetts has reopened more cautiously than many other states, frustrating some companies. At the same time, Massachusetts has achieved one of the lowest coronavirus transmission rates in the country, while some states that reopened more aggressively are experiencing spikes of infection.
Adjusting for seasonal employment trends, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Massachusetts civilian workforce grew by about 130,000 people, or about 4%, in June, a sign that some workers returned to work or started looking for new work. The workforce count includes both employed and unemployed people, but workers must actively seek work or expect retirements to be counted as unemployed.
The ranks of the unemployed in Massachusetts increased by almost 9%, to almost 640,000 people last month.
The state workforce is still approximately 135,000 people, or 3.5%, smaller than in June 2019, which may indicate that some people who have lost jobs are not looking for new ones due to poor prospects. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics were to count these people as unemployed, the Massachusetts unemployment rate could be even higher.
“The unemployment rate is a kind of tricky index because if people stop looking for a job, they disappear from the unemployment rate,” said Greg Sullivan, director of research at the Pioneer Institute, a right-leaning Boston think tank. who had projected unemployment in June. rate as high as 25%. “A lot of people have gone back to work, that’s the good news.”
