Greater Springfield lost 500 jobs in June, but has gained 4,000 jobs in the first half of the year.
SPRINGFIELD – The city’s unemployment rate rose to 12 percent in June from 11 .7 percent in May.
That was lower than the 12.2 percent unemployment rate Springfield recorded a year ago in June 2010, according to figures released Tuesday by the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Springfield has the fifth-highest unemployment rate of any city in the state. Lawrence is first at 16.8 percent. After Springfield, Holyoke is ninth-highest in the state and the next-highest in Western Massachusetts at 11.1 percent, up from 11 percent in May, but down from 11.7 percent in June 2010.
As a region, Springfield and its surrounding communities had an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent in June, up from 8.4 percent in May but down from 9.3 percent a year ago.
Statewide, the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate was 7.8 percent in June, up from 7.4 percent in May, but down from 8.5 percent in June.
Adjusted for seasonal changes in the economy, June’s statewide unemployment was 7.6 percent. The national average, which is also seasonally-adjusted, was 9.2 percent for June.
Greater Springfield lost 500 jobs last month, according the state. That makes Springfield and Greater New Bedford the only regions of the state to loose jobs in a month when summer tourism pumps up economies on Cape Cod and in the Berkshires.
For the first half of the year, however, Springfield and its surrounding towns have added 4,000 jobs.
The state as a whole added 41,600 jobs last month, a 1.3 percent rate of growth. Robert A. Nakosteen, a professor of economics and statistics at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst said the state’s overall job market is one of the more robust in the country.
“What we are seeing is more evidence of uneven growth,” Nakosteen said. “The action is in the East. That’s where the jobs are growing. That’s where salaries are growing.”
He said all that growth is being driven by burgeoning high-tech industries that Springfield doesn’t have.
Rena Kottcamp, director of research for the state Division of Unemployment Insurance, said some parts of the economy gained jobs in Greater Springfield in June.
Leisure and hospitality was up 1,200 in what is probably a seasonal fluctuation, Kottcamp said. The 500-job gain in construction outpaced normal seasonal growth, she said. Professional and scientific industries gained 400 jobs and manufacturing, long the backbone of the local economy, gained 300 jobs.
Kevin E. Lynn, manager of business services at FutureWorks one-stop job center in Springfield, said temporary staffing agencies accounted for 662 job opening s out of the 5,394 job openings posted at FutureWorks in the he fiscal year that ended July 1.
“That’s reflecting continued uncertainty on the part of employers,” Lynn said. “They are risk averse. They just don’t want to bring someone on full-time.”
Those 5,394 job openings were a 3 percent drop from the 5,560 openings posted in the previous fiscal year which ended July 1 2010.
Lynn said health care is still a growing industry, despite Baystate Health’s announcement last week that it will eliminate 354 jobs.
Lynn said the average wage for a job found through FutureWorks was $12.96 for the fiscal year that just ended. That’s compared with $12.57 on average last year.
Manufacturing still has a demand for highly-skilled machinists.
“Like every industry it is all about education, skills and training,” Lynn said. “If you don’t have those things, you will be hurting.”
Nakosteen said he doesn’t think that the federal debt crisis is stopping companies from hiring despite the trouble the controversy is causing in the financial markets.