Will CT see change in industry mix?

As Connecticut pushes ahead with the massive challenge of vaccinating the general population against COVID- 19, another daunting task remains — whence the 100,000 jobs that would boost employment back to levels in early 2020 that had not been seen in a dozen years?

Entering this year, nearly 150,000 Connecticut residents were receiving unemployment compensation as they searched for work. For the first time last November, survey estimates of joblessness by the Department of Labor came into line with the actual numbers of people reporting themselves as out of work, with the state’s unemployment rate at 8.2 percent.

That matches or is below the unemployment rate for a three- and- a- half year stretch of the Great Recession and its aftermath — a scenario many in Connecticut would have signed up for last spring, as economists floated the possibility of an extended economic depression.

And in the back half of January, Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget chief Melissa McCaw reported that her office now expects the state to close out the 2021 fiscal year this June with a $ 137.6 million surplus, the result of federal stimulus programs buoying business and consumer spending with implications for income and sales taxes among other categories of state revenue. President Biden took office Wednesday with a pledge to inject an additional $ 1.9 trillion into the U. S. economy.

“It’s good news — with the caveat that things change all the time, in COVID times,” Lamont said the day before details on the revised budget estimates were made public. “Our revenues are coming back stronger than we would have thought. ... Right now, it looks like we will not have to tap our rainy day fund.”

Still, DOL received more than a million applications for unemployment assistance as workers were furloughed at varying points last year, and as independent earners filed for benefits as allowed for the first time under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and a second stimulus package passed in December. Unemployment peaked last April at nearly 319,000 furloughed workers.

With many economists citing the hope last year for a “V- shaped” economic bounce back, they now concede the jobs recovery will resemble more the letter “K” in which some sectors trend upward, but others remain on a downward track over an extended period.

“The December [ U. S.] jobs report showed that 150,000 jobs were lost — and 100 percent of them were held by women,” said Fran Pastore, CEO of the Stamford- based Women’s Business Development Council which provides entrepreneurship advice. “The majority of people who are losing their jobs are definitely women who are hourly wage workers, and the majority of those hourly wage workers are Black and Brown women.”

Entering January, Connecticut employers had posted less than 50,000 job opportunities online as tracked by The Conference Board and the state Department of Labor. Even finding workers willing and able to fill every one of those jobs, that would leave the state with an employment gap equal to the combined work forces, at the eve of the pandemic, of Electric Boat, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Pfizer, ESPN, Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino.

In the coming weeks and months, job one will be replacement careers for hospitality sector workers, particularly hotel staff as the industry braces for many venues shuttering with the evaporation of business meetings that were their bread and butter weekdays and evenings.

“It’s huge, the amount of people that coming in new to [ real estate] — a lot of people from the hospitality industry,” said Paul Breunich, CEO of the Stamford- based brokerage firm William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. “And a lot of them have the skill set, in dealing with people.”

The pandemic has produced a new, tantalizing question: will office locales be a longterm determinant of employment in any state, or will remote working become the norm for jobs requiring only a broadband connection? And if so, will states with high costs of living like Connecticut lose higherearning professionals freed from the shackles of the commute to live wherever they choose, if working for companies that will allow it? Or will those families be drawn by its small- town charms, quality schools and other advantages?

“I think that’s a question that still hasn’t been answered yet. There’s a lot of speculation out there about what may or may not be going on, and if somebody says, ‘ oh no, we know’ — they don’t,” said Jim Fagan, executive managing director in the Stamford office of commercial real estate brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield. “I think the big question for these companies is, ... how do we improve our corporate culture to attract and retain the best [ people] when we don’t get to put our eyes on them every day?”