The Massachusetts unemployment rate dropped from 8.8 percent in August to 8.4 percent in September, the steepest drop since January 1976, state labor officials said this morning.
"The rate, which has been trending downward from the 9.5 percent rate in January and February, remains below the 9.6 percent national rate," the state's Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development said in a press release.
Also, the number of Massachusetts foreclosures started by lenders last month dropped about 23 percent from August 2010, and nearly 7 percent from a year ago said the Warren Group, a Boston firm that tracks local real estate activity.
In recent weeks, several big lenders, including Bank of America Corp. and GMAC, temporarily halted foreclosure proceedings in various states over allegations that they erred in processing documents, but now they have restarted the foreclosure process. (Click here to read an AP story on that subject that appeared in this morning's Boston Globe.)
"We will have to wait until the October statistics are tabulated to see the impact from Bank of America's decision to halt foreclosures in Massachusetts, pending a review of its paperwork and procedures," Warren Group chief executive Timothy M. Warren Jr. said in a statement. "From what we can see at the present time, Bank of America is involved in about 2,000 pending foreclosure cases in the Bay State."
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