More people in the Merrimack Valley are out of work today, but local officials said it's not companies here pushing residents into unemployment lines.
"There have been no major plant closings or downsizing (here), just a constant flow of worker layoffs across the board," said Fred Carberry, executive director of the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board. "In terms of hiring, the only bright spot is in the health care sector, which has also slowed down."
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development issued its latest unemployment figures for communities across the state last week, showing more Merrimack Valley people are out of work.
In Lawrence, for example, the unemployment rate for February was 16.4 percent — the highest in the state for urban areas — up from 15.7 in January. Last February, the rate was 9.9 percent.
The next highest rate in the area is held by Methuen, which is at 10.1 percent, up from 9.8 in January and 5.7 last February.
Rates in New Hampshire also are on the rise, with Derry hovering at almost 7 percent, Plaistow at 8.4, and Salem at 7.6 percent.
Lawrence Mayor Michael Sullivan said the spike can likely be attributed to job losses at companies outside the city. He said that last summer, for example, Procter & Gamble announced that it was cutting 1,200 jobs — many of them held by Lawrence residents — as it moved its Gillette packaging division overseas by 2010.
Locally, he noted, many companies remain strong, such as Polartec, which employs about 1,000 people, New Balance, with about 600, and Lawrence General Hospital, the largest private employer in the city with more than 1,000 employees.
The most recent major shutdown of an area company was of the Haverhill Paperboard plant, which put 174 people out of work late last summer.
Carberry's agency oversees unemployment and job programs in 15 communities from Lawrence to the Seacoast. He attributes part of Lawrence's high rate to a lack of education and training in the work force.
"In this type of economy, in a city that has a very high immigrant population and low average education level, the skill level of the average worker is lower than in suburban communities," Carberry said. "And they are first to be impacted when there's a downturn in the economy. In our region, 20 percent of the workers are in manufacturing, so when manufacturing gets hit, the unemployment rate goes up."
An infusion of stimulus money, particularly in the summer job market, should help keep unemployment rates in check.
Gov. Deval Patrick last week announced that in Massachusetts, more than $21.1 million in federal stimulus money will be made available to certain eligible communities, including Lawrence and Haverhill, to hire people from the age of 14 to 24 years old this summer and next.
Meanwhile, federal money also may be available to hire displaced adults. In Haverhill, an additional $285,000 in stimulus funding has been added to the city's annual $1.2 million allotment of community development block grant money to help boost employment. Haverhill's unemployment rate is 9.3 percent.
"We could use the money to hire people in the target neighborhoods," said Community Development Director Bill Pillsbury, whose staff oversees the federal block grant program administered by the office of Housing and Urban Development. "We would need HUD's permission to do this. But we'd like to hire people ... utilizing unemployed people who have skills, to put up street signs or work in the parks or cemeteries. There is a variety of work that could be done. That's a good use of the stimulus money."
Chart
Unemployment rate on the rise: Feb. 2008 vs. Feb. 2009
Massachusetts
City/Town: 20082009
Andover: 3.3 6.0
North Andover: 3.7 7.3
Haverhill: 5.3 9.3
Lawrence: 9.6 16.4
Methuen: 5.710.1
State: 4.98.3
New Hampshire
Town: 20082009
Derry: 4.56.9
Londonderry: 3.85.6
Plaistow: 6.08.4
Salem: 5.17.6
State: 3.75.9
