Total employment in Massachusetts rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in January, 34 months after the COVID-19 state of emergency began, as employers added a robust 19,600 jobs.
The January gains brought the statewide employment to 3,743,500, labor officials announced Friday. That’s just 200 positions short of the total recorded in February 2020, the last month before a cascade of enormous job losses followed by a jobs recovery.
The industry with the biggest growth was education and health services, which employed 5,000 more people month-over-month. Other sectors with gains include trade, transportation and utilities (+3,200 jobs), leisure and hospitality (+3,000 jobs), and professional, scientific and business services (+2,300 jobs).
Lab charged with Medicaid fraud
A clinical laboratory and its owner have been accused of submitting over $400,000 in Medicaid claims for unauthorized urine drug tests, the attorney general’s office in Massachusetts said Friday.
The residential sobriety tests were medically unnecessary, the office said in a news release. Laboratories may not bill Medicaid for them.
The Burlington-based Solid Diagnostics, Inc. and its owner were indicted last month by a statewide grand jury on two counts each of Medicaid false claims, false claims and larceny over $1,200.
The lab and owner are scheduled to be arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court on March 21. It wasn’t immediately known if they had attorneys.
The attorney general’s office said last year, one of its Medicaid Fraud Division investigations resulted in charges against several clinical laboratories, their owners, marketing companies, and a doctor in connection with Medicaid fraud, money laundering and kickbacks involving over $2 million in urine drug tests.
