Used plastic pallets in Massachusetts

What the jobs data shows for Massachusetts

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts private employers in Massachusetts at 20,695 warehousing and storage jobs across 248 establishments in 2025, about 83.4 jobs per establishment.

• Essex County: 5,323 warehousing jobs, 26% of Massachusetts and 0.28% of the country, 1.3 times Worcester County.
• Worcester County: 4,052 warehousing jobs, 20% of Massachusetts and 0.21% of the country, 76% of the size of Essex County.
• Bristol County: 3,283 warehousing jobs, 16% of Massachusetts and 0.17% of the country, 62% of the size of Essex County.

Massachusetts against the country

Massachusetts's figures sit on the left and the national totals beside them, so each share and rank shows how much of the country's pallet work lands here.

What the ratios say

Disclosure rules in the BLS data hide small counties, so the county totals for Massachusetts are a floor and not the whole of its 20,695 jobs.

• The three largest warehousing counties hold 61% of Massachusetts's jobs in the line.
• The average warehouse in Massachusetts employs 83.4 people where the national average is 81.5, a gap of 2 percent above it.
• Food manufacturing employs 1.40 people for every warehousing job in Massachusetts; across the US the ratio is 0.93.
• Massachusetts holds 1.6% of the nation's food manufacturing jobs and 1.1% of its warehousing jobs, so food is the heavier of the two lines here.
• Pharmaceutical manufacturing adds 10,179 jobs, 2.9% of the US total, enough to make sanitisable pallets a real part of local demand.
• Refrigerated space works out at 2,609 cubic feet for every warehousing job, against 2,098 nationally.
• Essex County's 5,323 warehousing jobs are more than the whole state total of 12 other states, the largest being Rhode Island at 5,152.
• Mississippi runs warehouses of nearly the same size, at 83.5 jobs per establishment against 83.4 here.
• For food manufacturing, Oregon is the closest match at 28,203 jobs, 833 below Massachusetts's 29,036.
• The smallest county the BLS shows for Massachusetts is Bristol County with 3,283 jobs; the largest has 1.6 times as many.
• If warehousing jobs were split evenly across 50 states, each would hold 2.0% of the total; Massachusetts holds 1.09%, which is 0.55 times an even share.
• Kansas sits above Massachusetts with 463 more warehousing jobs, and Iowa sits below with 871 fewer.

Where Massachusetts ranks

Massachusetts and the 27 states above it hold 91% of the country's 1,901,976 warehousing jobs between them. The median state has 23,211, so Massachusetts is 2,515 jobs below it; California, the largest, has 236,923, or 11 times as many.

The pallet-using lines in Massachusetts

By location quotient Massachusetts leans hardest on refrigerated warehousing (1.9x the national share). Freezing can make some pallet materials brittle, so a cold-room lot is a question for the maker as well as for the grade.

• Refrigerated warehousing: 3,299 jobs in Massachusetts, 4.5% of the 73,136 across the US, or 0.16 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Food manufacturing: 29,036 jobs in Massachusetts, 1.6% of the 1,775,008 across the US, or 1.40 for every warehousing job in the state.

The ladder around Massachusetts

States are ranked by warehousing and storage jobs. Massachusetts is 28th of 50; the table shows the two states above it and the two below.

Massachusetts has no metro page

Massachusetts has no page for a single metro, since none of the sixty in the data lies inside it. Requests from anywhere in the state are read as they come, and the reply says how a lot would travel.

Paperwork to keep

• The written lot description and the date it was sent.
• Your own count, signed and dated by whoever received the load.
• Photographs of stacks, plates and any marks, stored with the order number.
• The maker's papers for resin, colour or rating, where the job needs them.
• A line naming who agreed to which exceptions, so a later dispute has a record.

What to write down about a lot

• Footprint in both units, with the readings you took rather than the label.
• Number of stacks, pallets per stack and any odd stacks left over.
• Makers and model numbers seen on plates or moulded into the ribs.
• Count of repaired, mismatched or cracked pieces, and where each sits.
• Marks, colours and any smell, with a note on who confirmed each.

What to put on a request from Massachusetts

USDA counted 54 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in Massachusetts on 1 October 2025, 23rd among the states; ask the maker how a pallet behaves frozen.

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in
• Grade: like new
• Quantity: a band, from a few pallet-loads to a truck
• ZIP: the Massachusetts receiving ZIP

Other states

• Alaska
• Arkansas
• Connecticut
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Kansas
• Maine
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Vermont

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