Just How Many People Does the City of New Bedford Employ?

Are you looking for a job? If you live in New Bedford, you may not need to wander much further than City Hall to find one, as the City itself is one of the largest employers in New Bedford.

However, don't believe the hype some sites are putting up about just how many jobs are available.

Zippia: The Career Expert says the City of New Bedford is among the 100 largest "companies" in Massachusetts, but the City has provided numbers that are in sharp contrast to what Zippia claims.

Zippia says the City of New Bedford is the largest employer in New Bedford, followed by Southcoast Health and AFC Cable Systems. However, Zippia claims the City has 10,001 employees, which isn't even close to the actual figure.

"The number is way off," said Jonathan Darling, Public Information Officer for the City of New Bedford. "Not sure where this website got the 10,000 number, but in reality, the City has about 1,300 employees. If you add in the School Department (almost 2,700), we’re roughly at 4,000, less than half of what that site claims we have."

Darling said the City of New Bedford is the third-largest employer in the region, with Southcoast Health at No. 1 and UMass Dartmouth coming in at No. 2.

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What about the rest of Massachusetts?

According to the Zippia website, "General Electric comes in at the top, with more current employees than any other company in the state."

Zippia looked at the companies headquartered in Massachusetts with at least 100 employees. The site says there are 2,884 such companies. General Electric has 305,000 employees, according to Zippia.

Supermarket chains, financial institutions, and even municipalities appear throughout the list of the top 100 companies in Massachusetts.

The top 10 reads this way: General Electric, The TJX Companies, Dunkin' Brands, Randstad North America, Inc., Chase, Ahold USA, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Tyco SimplexGrinnell, SK Holding Company, Inc., and Gillette.

How many of those company names do you recognize? I've heard of half of them.

Rounding out the top 20, Stop & Shop is in 11th place, followed by Staples, Softbank Holdings, Inc., Raytheon Technologies, Fidelity Investments, Staples Business Advantage, STANLEY Healthcare, EF Education First, The RMR Group, and Liberty Mutual Insurance.

Steward Health Care finishes 22nd overall, Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts is 27th, Shaw's ranks 33rd, Market Basket is 40th, Massachusetts General Hospital is 53rd, and the Kraft Group is 73rd..

Visit the Zippia website for a complete list of the top companies in Massachusetts.

For purposes of full disclosure, I cannot independently verify any of these other numbers.