Many more vie for far fewer jobs

Unemployment in state climbs again

The competition for jobs in Massachusetts has more than doubled over the past year, as a growing pool of jobless and underemployed people fight for fewer and fewer openings, according to study from Northeastern University.

The study, by Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies, estimates that for every job opening in the state, there are nearly eight people who can't find full-time work, up from just three at the end of 2007.

And the competition is only expected to grow more fierce. The Massachusetts unemployment rate surged again in February, rising four-tenths of a point to 7.8 percent, the highest rate since March 1993, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported yesterday.

"The odds of finding a job have deteriorated so badly it will lengthen the bouts of unemployment," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies and lead author of the study. "There will be growing ranks of people who won't be able to get out."

Bruce Baker, 42, of Hyde Park, was laid off as a corporate travel agent just 10 days ago, but has already discovered how tough it's going to be to find a new job.

"There's not only a large number of people who are out of work, but it's across so many industries," he said. "So few industries are hiring. The only one seems to be the state unemployment office."

The population of unemployed workers seems to be one of the few growing segments of the labor force. Nationally, the unemployment rate has jumped more than three points over the past year, to 8.1 percent, and the number of unemployed by about 5 million, to 12.5 million.

The Massachusetts unemployment rate, which stood at 4.6 percent in February 2008, has also jumped more than three points over the year. Nearly 270,000 workers in the state were officially counted as unemployed in February 2009, 108,000 more than a year earlier.

But these statistics, as sobering as they are, fail to fully capture the deterioration in the labor market, Sum said. They don't include the underemployed, those working part time because they can't find full-time jobs, or jobless workers who have stopped looking for work.

In addition to those workers the government counts as unemployed in Massachusetts, in January there were more than 120,000 underemployed and an additional 81,000 who had given up looking for work, according to the center. Over about a year's time ending in January, the number of jobless and underemployed rose 65 percent to more than 450,000, or 13.3 percent of the workforce.

Meanwhile, the number of job openings in the state has plunged by nearly half, to about 50,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008 from about 90,000 the year before, according to the center.

At Professional Staffing Group, a Boston recruiting and staffing agency, company president Aaron Green said each job opening his firm advertises attracts 100 to 200 resumes. The number of people calling the office to ask about job possibilities has probably tripled, to as many as 60 a day from about 20 a year ago, Green said.

Green cited another factor contributing to dwindling vacancies: People with jobs are staying put. Typically, workers leaving their old jobs for better opportunities account for about half of the firm's placements. But today, worried that taking a new job could make them more vulnerable to layoffs, those workers account for only 20 percent of the company's placements.

"People are hunkering down," Green said. "There's definitely skittishness about changing jobs now."

Massachusetts employers have cut jobs in each of the past nine months. In February, they cut another 11,000 jobs, the state's Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported.

The state has lost more than 86,000 jobs, or nearly 3 percent of employment over the past year.

About 90 percent of the job losses have come in the past six months.

Professional and business services, a leading employment sector that includes science and technology firms, led the February losses, shedding about 4,500 jobs, according to the state. The sector has lost 27,000 jobs, or nearly 6 percent of employment, over the past year.

The trade, transportation, and utilities sector, which includes retailers, lost 3,700 jobs last month.

Manufacturers slashed about 2,500 jobs.

Construction firms, which have experienced the deepest job losses over the past year, losing nearly 12 percent of their total employment, cut another 300 jobs in February.

On the other hand, education and health services, a traditionally stable sector, added 1,300 jobs in February.

Leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants, hotels, and tourism-related firms, also added about 1,300 jobs.

Employment was unchanged in financial services in February. The sector, hard hit by the Wall Street meltdown, has lost more than 12,000 jobs, or nearly 6 percent of all jobs in the sector, over the past year.

"The rate of job loss is still very high," said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economic analyst and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "We're in a vicious cycle. As long as you keep losing jobs, that means lower income, lower consumer spending, and more job losses."

Sandy Migliaccio, 58, of South Boston, was laid off about three weeks ago from her job, after 10 years of caring for plants in corporate buildings. She's been networking and planning to pick up computer skills. She's also making at least two phone calls a day to inquire about work at different companies.

"I leave my name and nobody calls back," she said. "I have a feeling this is going to go on for a while."

Erin Ailworth of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com.