Economy Desk
Business ยท Economy
Jobs, wages, prices, the waterfront and the businesses behind them in Gloucester, Rockport, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea, from public records. Every number links to its source.
The big employers, at a glance
Publicly traded parents are tracked through their filings and earnings dates. Private, mutual and nonprofit employers get the public filing that stands in for earnings.
How many residents are looking for work
Monthly rate for residents of each town, not seasonally adjusted, so summer dips and winter rises are real. Massachusetts is shown on the same basis.
Workers, jobs and pay, town by town
Residents in the labor force are people who live in the town. Jobs located in town count positions at employers there, wherever the worker lives. Tap a column to sort.
What people do for work here
Average monthly jobs by industry in 2025 and what each pays per week on average.
The summer swing
Small employers, and a lot of people working for themselves
How many employers each ZIP code has, how big they are and what they do, plus the share of working residents who run their own business. Employer counts are for 2023, the latest the Census Bureau has published.
Employers by number of employees
Employers by industry
Working residents who are self-employed
Owners of incorporated and unincorporated businesses as a share of all workers who live in each place, 2020 to 2024 survey average.
Who comes to Cape Ann to work, and where residents go
All four towns together, counting primary and secondary jobs.
Where incoming workers live
Where commuting residents work
How Cape Ann compares
Five-year survey averages for 2020 to 2024. Small towns carry wide margins of error, shown beside each figure.
What it costs to live here
No agency measures inflation for Cape Ann alone. The closest official gauge is the Boston-area consumer price index, which includes Essex County. Housing is measured town by town.
Inflation, change from a year earlier
Average single-family assessed value
Federal house price index by ZIP code, yearly change
Property tax on the average single-family home, FY2026
How the port of Gloucester stacks up
What fishermen landed at the dock in Gloucester each year since 1981, and how that compares with other U.S. ports. Add New Bedford, Dutch Harbor or any of 200 ports to the chart. Values are what boats were paid at first sale, before processing.
Gloucester against other ports, 1981 to 2024
Top U.S. ports in a single year
What Massachusetts boats landed, 2024
Statewide by species, top 12 by value. NOAA does not publish species totals for single ports.
Fishing jobs on the payroll
Gloucester employers in commercial fishing, 2025 annual averages from the state.
Most deckhands and many captains are self-employed and paid a share of the catch, so they are not counted here. The landings above are the better measure of the fleet.
Find a Cape Ann business
About 2,100 open businesses and organizations from an open places dataset. Dark squares mark the largest employers. Search by name, or pick a category or town.