Mass. unemployment rate drops to 7.4%

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

The Massachusetts unemployment rate was 7.4 percent in August, down from 7.6 percent in July, the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said this morning.

It is the state’s lowest monthly unemployment rate since February 2009, the office said.

The national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent.

But after adding jobs in June and July, the Bay State economy lost 8,900 jobs in August. Jobs and unemployment numbers can sometimes diverge because they are based on two separate surveys. Monthly jobs estimates are based on a survey of employers, while the unemployment rate is estimated from a survey of households.

State labor officials attributed more than 6,000 job losses to striking workers in the information sector, which includes telecommunications. Some 45,000 workers in the Northeast went on strike against Verizon Communications Inc. last month, but have since returned to work.

Even with the August loss, the state’s economy has still managed to add nearly 42,000 jobs in the first eight months of 2011.

Through July, Massachusetts has added jobs at more than double the pace of the nation as a whole, a story in Sunday’s Globe noted.

Massachusetts has a high concentration of companies that sell technology equipment, components, and services, which have benefited from strong global demand for these products and services. Boosted by its technology sector, the Massachusetts economy has expanded at a much faster rate than the US economy.

In the first seven months of the year, the state’s employers have added more than 50,000 jobs, an increase of nearly 2 percent, according to the US Labor Department. Nationally, employment grew less than 1 percent during the same period.

Still, finding a job in Massachusetts hasn’t been easy. Spooked by everything from the political stalemate in Washington to the national debt crises in Europe and fears over a double-dip recession, many companies have been cautious about hiring.