The number of jobs in human services in Massachusetts grew by 48 percent between 2003 and 2011, according to a new report examining the economic impact of the human services industry.
In 2011, there were 145,000 human service worker jobs in Massachusetts, accounting for 5 percent of the state's total jobs.
The report, released Wednesday at a Statehouse event, was commissioned by the Providers' Council, an umbrella organization representing human service providers, and done by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute and the UMass Dartmouth Public Policy Center.
"For the very first time, we now have a sober and hopefully a very balanced assessment as to not only the social impact of the human services sector in Massachusetts, which is fairly well known...but this report also offers an assessment of the economic impact of nonprofits, and that for us, and for the community at large, is critically important," said David Jordan, chairman of the Providers' Council's research committee and president and CEO of the Seven Hills Foundation in Worcester, which supports people with disabilities.
"We hire well over 100,000 people in human services alone," Jordan said. "We're one of the largest employee groups in the commonwealth, far higher than telecommunications and even construction. Yet we're often not thought of as a substantive economic force in the commonwealth."
[For more of this story, written by Shira Schoenberg, go to http://www.masslive.com/politi...uman_service_in.html]
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