The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy area includes nine metropolitan divisions – separately identifiable employment centers within the larger metropolitan area. The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metropolitan Division, which made up 69 percent of the workforce, gained 36,800 jobs from April 2012 to April 2013, accounting for 78 percent of the area’s growth. Each of the other six divisions for which data are published also added jobs over the year.

Industry employment

Two industries in the Boston area – education and health services and professional and business services - accounted for nearly two-thirds of the employment gain from April 2012 to April 2013. Education and health services, the largest industry in the Boston area, gained 15,900 jobs, the largest increase in this industry since July 2007. The 3.1-percent growth rate in this industry was above the national average of 1.8 percent. The professional and business services supersector added 15,000 jobs in the Boston area over the year. The 3.6-percent local gain was close to the national increase of 3.4 percent.

The next-highest job gainer in the Boston area was construction. Employment in this industry expanded by 6,200 from April 2012 to April 2013, the most jobs added annually in this sector since July 2001. The 7.7-percent rate of job growth in Boston’s construction industry far outpaced the 2.9-percent gain nationwide.

Local employment in both government and trade, transportation, and utilities rose by 2,600 from April 2012. The 0.8-percent rate of job growth locally in government compared with the 0.4-percent decline nationwide. The 0.7-percent gain in Boston’s trade, transportation, and utilities industry was below the 1.7-percent increase recorded nationally. Employment in the information industry rose by 2,500 over the year in Boston, and the 3.4-percent increase was well above the 0.4-percent gain for the U.S.

Employment in the 12 largest metropolitan areas

Boston was 1 of the nation’s 12 largest metropolitan statistical areas in April 2013. All of these areas experienced over-the-year job growth during the period, with seven exceeding the national average of 1.6 percent. The fastest rate of job growth was registered in Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, up 4.2 percent, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, up 3.5 percent. The slowest rate of expansion occurred in Detroit-Warren-Livonia, up 0.6 percent.

The New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island area added the largest number of jobs, 160,100, since April 2012. Employment in Houston, Dallas, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana also expanded by more than 100,000. Only Miami and Detroit had employment increases below 25,000 over the year.

Professional and business services registered the largest over-the-year employment gains in 4 of the 12 metropolitan areas from April a year ago—Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco. Trade, transportation, and utilities and education and health services each led the job increases in three metropolitan areas.

Government recorded the largest loss of jobs in five areas—Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, New York, and Philadelphia. In Boston, Houston, and Washington there were no supersectors with job losses of 1,000 or greater since last April.

Additional information

Information in this release will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: 202-691-5200; TDD message referral phone: 1-800-877-8339.

Technical Note

This release presents nonfarm payroll employment estimates from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The CES survey is a Federal-State cooperative endeavor between State employment security agencies and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry employment data for all states and metropolitan areas from the CES program are available on the Internet at www.bls.gov/sae/.

Definitions. Employment data refer to persons on establishment payrolls who receive pay for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. Persons are counted at their place of work rather than at their place of residence; those appearing on more than one payroll are counted on each payroll. Industries are classified on the basis of their principal activity in accordance with the 2007 version of the North American Industry Classification System.

Method of estimation. The employment data are estimated using a "link relative" technique in which a ratio (link relative) of current-month employment to that of the previous month is computed from a sample of establishments reporting for both months. The estimates of employment for the current month are obtained by multiplying the estimates for the previous month by these ratios. Small-domain models are used as the official estimators for the approximately 39 percent of CES published series which have insufficient sample for direct sample-based estimates. More complete information on the technical procedures used to develop these estimates and additional data appear in Employment and Earnings, which is available on line at www.bls.gov/opub/ee/home.htm.   

Annual revisions. Employment estimates are adjusted annually to a complete count of jobs, called benchmarks, derived principally from tax reports that are submitted by employers who are covered under state unemployment insurance (UI) laws. The benchmark information is used to adjust the monthly estimates between the new benchmark and the preceding one and also to establish the level of employment for the new benchmark month. Thus, the benchmarking process establishes the level of employment, and the sample is used to measure the month-to-month changes in the level for the subsequent months.

Reliability of the estimates. The estimates presented in this release are based on sample surveys, administrative data, and modeling and, thus, are subject to sampling and other types of errors. Sampling error is a measure of sampling variability—that is, variation that occurs by chance because a sample rather than the entire population is surveyed. Survey data also are subject to nonsampling errors, such as those which can be introduced into the data collection and processing operations. Estimates not directly derived from sample surveys are subject to additional errors resulting from the specific estimation processes used. The sums of individual items may not always equal the totals shown in the same tables because of rounding.

Employment estimates. Measures of sampling error are available for state CES data at the total nonfarm and supersector level on line at www.bls.gov/sae/790stderr.htm. Information on recent benchmark revisions for states is available on the BLS Web site at www.bls.gov/sae/.

Area definitions. The substate area data published in this release reflect the standards and definitions established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget on December 1, 2009. A detailed list of geographic definitions is available at www.bls.gov/lau/lausmsa.htm.

The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.-N.H. Metropolitan New England City and Town Area (NECTA) includes nine NECTA divisions--subdivisions of the larger NECTA which function as distinct social, economic, and cultural areas within the larger region. The NECTA divisions that compose the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH NECTA include: Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA, Brockton-Bridgewater-Easton, MA, Framingham, MA, Haverhill-North Andover-Amesbury, MA-NH, Lawrence-Methuen-Salem, MA-NH, Lowell-Billerica-Chelmsford, MA-NH, Nashua, NH-MA, Peabody, MA, Taunton-Norton-Raynham, MA, and select cities and towns within.