The Boston-Cambridge-Quincy area is comprised of 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 45,200 jobs from July 2011 to July 2012, accounting for 86 percent of the area’s growth. Five of the other six divisions for which data are published also added jobs over the year.

Industry employment

Professional and business services had the largest employment gain in the Boston area from July 2011, up 21,700, the 28th consecutive over-the-year increase recorded in the supersector. The 5.4-percent growth rate in this industry was well above the national average of 3.4 percent.

Educational and health services, the largest supersector in the Boston area, expanded by 12,800 from July a year ago, the largest 12-month gain recorded since March 2010. The 2.6-percent rate of job growth in this industry was above the U.S. average of 2.1 percent.

The next largest job gainer in the Boston area was trade, transportation, and utilities, with an increase of 5,700 from July 2011 to July 2012. Three other industries added between 4,000 and 5,000 jobs—leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, and construction. While the rates of job growth in trade, transportation, and utilities; leisure and hospitality; and manufacturing were at or near the national average, the rate of increase in Boston’s construction industry far outpaced the gain nationwide.

Elsewhere in the Boston area, employment dropped by 4,200 or 1.5 percent in government in July 2012, the only supersector to lose jobs over the year. During this same 12-month period, public sector employment decreased 0.5 percent nationally.

Employment in the 12 largest metropolitan areas

Boston was 1 of the nation’s 12 largest metropolitan statistical areas in July 2012. All of these areas experienced over-the-year job growth during the period, with six exceeding the national average of 1.4 percent. Two areas—San Francisco and Houston—registered rates of employment growth above 3.0 percent, more than double that for the nation. The slowest rate of expansion occurred in Philadelphia, up 0.5 percent.

The New York area added the largest number of jobs, 90,400, from July 2011, followed by Los Angeles and Houston, up 86,300 and 83,700, respectively. Employment in San Francisco, Dallas, and Boston expanded by more than 50,000. Only Philadelphia and Miami had employment increases of less than 15,000 over the year.

Professional and business services registered the largest over-the-year employment gains in 8 of the 12 metropolitan areas—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Manufacturing experienced the largest increase in jobs in one area, Detroit, from July 2011 to July 2012.

Government recorded the largest loss of jobs in nine areas—Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. New York’s loss of 28,600 public sector jobs was the largest decrease over the 12-month period. One area, San Francisco, added jobs in the public sector, up 11,700 from a year ago.

Additional information

For personal assistance or further information on the Current Employment Statistics program, as well as other Bureau programs, contact the New England Information Office at 617-565-2327 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. 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.

Employment definition. 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.

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 and for metropolitan area CES data. Information on recent benchmark revisions for states is available on the BLS Web site at