Ken
O’Brien
Of the 351 cities and towns reporting, Southbridge, with an unemployment rate of 6.5%, was tied with Hinsdale for the 15th
highest unemployment rate in Massachusetts for the month of April. Of course Southbridge has a labor force almost eight times the size of Hinsdale's.
Eight
other communities with higher rates were either resort communities on Cape Cod
or of inconsequential size. Five are dramatically larger than Southbridge. Only
North Adams, with a rate of 6.6%, is
comparable to our town.
If there was any good news to be found in this fact
it was that from March of 2015 the rate of unemployment in Southbridge declined
by 1.3 percentage points. However, this was accompained by a 1.4% decline in the available labor force. On balance, Southbridge remained firmly ensconced
in the top 5 percent of pockets of unemployment in the state.
