UPDATE: The Bay State’s unemployment rate over the 2009 calendar year was 8.4 percent, far above the 4.5 percent that we found worrying in 2007. See the map below for 2009 town-by-town figures, or get the 2007 and 2009 data as an Excel spreadsheet or PDF. The highest unemployment rates in 2009 were in Provincetown (21 percent), Lawrence (16 percent), Monroe and Fall River (15 percent each), and New Bedford (14 percent). The lowest rates were in Hancock, Gosnold, and Mount Washington (3 percent each); the biggest communities to stay under 6 percent were Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton. For current monthly figures, go to the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

Massachusetts logged a 4.5 percent unemployment rate over the 2007 calendar year, just one tenth of a percentage point below the national average. This was progress of a sort, since the unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in 2006 and went as high as 5.8 percent in 2003. But we’re still far above the 2.7 percent of 2000, our best showing in the past couple of decades.

The map below shows unemployment levels for almost every city and town, with communities far above the state average in red and those far below the state average in white. The state’s largest city doesn’t stand out here; Boston’s 4.4 percent unemployment rate last year and its 3.0 rate in 2000 were pretty close to the Massachusetts total. Instead, last year’s outliers tended to be in resort areas with seasonal fluctuations (Provincetown was up to 31.9 percent in January 2007 but dropped to 2.7 percent in August) and “gateway cities” with stubborn unemployment problems. The jobless rate stayed above 5 percent every single month last year in Lawrence, Fall River, New Bedford, Springfield, and Holyoke.

In 2006, the last year for which such detailed data is available, Lawrence saw a slight uptick in manufacturing jobs (to 4,895, still below 2004’s number), but the other four cities all continued to lose blue-collar positions. Brookline, by contrast, consistently has one of the lowest jobless rates in the state and has been helped by a steady rise in “accommodations and food services” jobs since the beginning of the decade (up to 1,979 by 2006).

Several towns between Worcester and Springfield had a better employment picture than the state as a whole in 2000 but ended up in worse-than-average shape last year — again, mostly due to the loss of manufacturing jobs. The western city of Pittsfield, however, has taken a different course, going from an above-average unemployment rate of 3.2 percent in 2000 to a 4.5 percent rate in 2007, which is in line with the state average. Manufacturing jobs have sharply declined in Pittsfield, but the city has partly compensated for that with growth in the health care, “professional and technical,” and tourism sectors.