Over 100 attend recent job fair in Marlborough

City touts 19-year-low unemployment

Marlborough – Marlborough’s unemployment rate hit a 19-year-low for the month of April, as the Marlborough Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) held a city-wide job fair to promote local STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) jobs and place city residents and recent graduates in open positions at area employers. According to the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD), unemployment sat at 2.3 percent in April, the lowest for this month since the year 2000.

More than 30 graduating students from Worcester Polytechnic University, Framingham State University, UMass Lowell, Clark University, Northeastern University, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island and other New England area colleges, as well as alumni from the city’s Advanced Math and Science Academy and Marlborough High School were among close to 130 jobseekers who attended the Marlborough Works Job Fair, held at the Courtyard by Marriott May 23 as part of Mayor Arthur Vigeant’s ongoing efforts to increase local employment. About 20 attendees also took advantage of free interview workshops run by MassHire Framingham Career Center during the event.

The job fair hosted 20 local companies, including Boston Scientific and Quest Diagnostics, both of which made this year’s Forbes list of the country’s top 500 employers. Hiring representatives from GE Healthcare Life Sciences, IPG Photonics, Doble Engineering, Nasuni Cloud Storage and other Marlborough-based companies were also in attendance, looking to fill about 300 open positions.

According to a press release from the MEDC, more than 120 companies have moved to or expanded in Marlborough over the past eight years, adding more than 7,000 jobs to the local labor market. The city’s unemployment rate has fallen by 48 percent over the same time period, the labor force has grown by about 6 percent and the number of people employed has risen by more than 8 percent since 2012.