Manufacturing is a bright spot for 2017

After long decline, state saw increase in factory jobs

Here’s a happy quirk for a state that lost 90,000 manufacturing jobs, more than a third of its total, between 1999 and 2016: Connecticut gained 2,900 factory positions in 2017.

That’s only the third annual gain since the 1980s, and it’s the largest one-year gain in at least 30 years.

Happy Days are here again? Not so fast. The state as a whole added just 2,300 jobs in 2017 even with the manufacturing jump — meaning all other sectors combined actually lost 600 jobs for the full year. And that followed a weak year of just 5,300 added jobs in 2016 for all sectors combined.

To put that in perspective, a good year of 1 percent gains would be 16,000 added jobs, something we’ve only seen once since we came out of the Great Recession.

So it’s a mixed picture, overall not good, based on Friday’s annual revision of the jobs numbers we’ve been following every month from the Department of Labor.

But when was the last time manufacturing outpaced all other sectors combined for a full year in Connecticut? My guess after following this for more than 25 years: never, or at least since Sam Colt and Oliver Winchester set out to win the West.

Yes, it’s a naive hope, but if factory declines led Connecticut down, maybe a new era of gains could pull an ailing state back into economic health.

For now, let’s shoot for coming out of intensive care.

The picture comes into focus in Stratford, where Sikorsky Aircraft has been stable at about 7,900 local employees for a year or so, but is looking ahead to a likely ramp-up after it signs contracts for the CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy inked a $225 million aid package for Sikorsky a couple of years ago to ensure the CH-53K will be built here, just as production of the storied Black Hawk reaches longplanned declines.

Not far away, Straton Industries, a defense and aerospace subcontractor that machines parts and assemblies, added a half-dozen employees over the last few months alone, a 10 percent gain. And the company could use more workers if it could find them with the right skills, said Dave Cremin, the president and owner.

“The lack of skilled labor has been our biggest challenge for a decade,” Cremin said.

Cremin is bullish about Connecticut’s high-end manufacturing picture, as Pratt & Whitney reaches peak output of its geared turbofan commercial jet engines and its f135 engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. Both programs have faced controversy, but hiring remains robust in East Hartford and Middletown.

And in Groton, Electric Boat is at full employment building Virginia-class attack submarines and is designing the next-generation Columbia class of subs to carry nuclear warheads.

“The world is in a technological growth phase and it boils down to, ‘who can make this stuff ?’ We’re a skilled state, that’s one thing we’ve got going for us,” Cremin said. “I think that bodes well for us . ... The world needs the high end right now.”

Straton is boosting training, has an apprenticeship program and spends about $400,000 a year on new equipment, Cremin said.

A couple of miles toward Milford, close to the Housatonic River, the very small Glyne Manufacturing Co., which shapes high-end tubes, hasn’t added to its staff of 10 other than to replace people it lost. But the feeling is good and work is steady, Vice President Tom Frei said.

“It just seems like there are a lot of people we haven’t done work for in a couple of years and now there are small jobs,” Frei said.

Stratford is the town where Phil Young just won a special election to the state House of Representatives, making him the first Democrat to represent his district in 44 years. Is that a sign people are starting to see progress? Does it mean Democrats will hold the governor’s seat despite Malloy’s unpopularity and deep budget shortfalls Connecticut still faces?

We can hardly say that, considering Young, a chef, won by barely more than 60 votes in a genteel race. Coming off a door-to-door campaign, Young, 54, said families in his district, the eastern side of town, “are kind of treading water.”

“It’s gotten better, but it’s not great,” Young said in his first week on the job at the state Capitol. “I did not see that people were really rosy out there, no I did not. People were kind of dissatisfied with the pace of things.”

But not utterly dissatisfied, either, he said.

What if the pace does pick up? Preliminary numbers from the labor department showed a gain of 3,400 jobs in the Connecticut economy in January. If we do have a good year, will that help the Democrats hold on to power?

If we gain momentum, “Thank God for Donald Trump,” said J.R. Romano, the Republican state chairman. “There is a trend in the right direction . ... and it is finally hitting the shores of Connecticut.”

Democrats say the gains under Trump, including Friday’s bump of 313,000 jobs for February, are still below what the economy did in the last few years under former President Barack Obama, whose policies set the stage for sustained growth.

That debate won’t end, and clearly the state picture depends primarily on the U.S. economy — and on federal defense spending. Ironically, Malloy is hurt by his worst-performing sector, government jobs, precisely because he’s the only governor in recent memory who has actually cut the state payroll significantly.

The state job report is based on monthly surveys of employers, and the annual revisions use payroll data and other measures to draw a clearer picture. What we learned was that while manufacturing was much higher than we thought, the total number of jobs in finance — another crucial engine of prosperity — was lower than we had thought, by a couple of thousand jobs.

I’m using yearly averages here, since we’re looking at full years. If we look at the year-over-year change in December, manufacturing was up by a head-spinning 6,300 jobs.

Overall, we thought we had created 5,900 jobs in 2017 based on the monthly reports, which was a lousy year. The new total of 2,300 jobs for the year is downright anemic, especially with a banner year on the machine shop floors.

“Connecticut is going to have to make those tough choices to really get fiscally responsible,” said Cremin, at Staton Industries. “I don’t know how you’re going to power your way out of this.”