State jobs on the rise again

Connecticut added 1,500 jobs in October led by a sustained surge in the New Haven area, putting the state back on a growth track as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy winds down his final weeks on the job after taking office after the Great Recession.

The state’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.2 percent in October, according to Thursday estimates by the Connecticut Department of Labor, compared to the U.S. jobless rate of 3.7 percent. Connecticut’s private-sector employers averaged more than $1,100 in weekly pay, a 3.4 percent increase, as companies hired in the wake of a 3.1 percent expansion of the state economy last spring.

In August, Connecticut topped the 1.7 million jobs mark for the first time since June 2008, marking a fourth consecutive month of job gains before a contraction in September that the state said was more severe than an earlier estimate, at 900 jobs lost. Connecticut employment remains about 11,400 jobs short of the state’s peak employment set in March 2008, with DataCore Partners economist Don KlepperSmith stating at the time that the state might need another full year to recover all the jobs lost in the recession.

The financial sector led Connecticut’s October hiring with a net gain of 900 jobs for a 0.7 percent gain, with a catch-all category of transportation, trade and utilities seeing the steepest drop at 400 jobs.

Gov.-elect Ned Lamont has pledged to make the economy his top priority, commencing a “revitalization tour” as he dubbed it last week, and convening a roundtable of prominent Connecticut employers that included Farmington-based United Technologies; the Electric Boat subsidiary of General Dynamics in Groton; the Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft unit of Lockheed Martin; and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield.

Lamont was adamant during the campaign that he would not make incentives the cornerstone of his economic development strategy, stating instead he would use the power of persuasion to convince businesses to consider expanding here, and where possible knock down regulations.

“The hope is that Lamont and his administration will focus in on who gets on trains headed to (New York) each day and what they do professionally, and turn that into the right kind of incentive for those considering relocating to (Connecticut),” said David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc in Norwalk and a board member of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. “We have all this talent here that would happily not commute if you put your business here.”

In October, the labor market area that includes metropolitan Bridgeport and Stamford saw a loss of 100 jobs, with employment having last peaked in the summer of 2000. The Danbury area that includes New Milford offset that with employers adding 100 jobs to maintain peak employment above 79,000 jobs, with New Haven leading the state with 1,300 jobs in October to hit a record milestone of more than 287,000 jobs.

Southwestern Connecticut has ranked consistently this year in the bottom third of metropolitan areas nationally for employment gains, however, including in September when the region generated a jobs gain of less than 1 percent over the intervening 12 months. The statewide job count was up 1.3 percent as of October for a gain of 22,300 jobs.

Several employers list at least 50 open jobs in the region, including Stamfordbased Gartner, Western Connecticut Health Network and CVS; but there have been ample numbers of companies offsetting that growth with layoffs, to include Danone, which is in the process of closing a YoCrunch production plant in Naugatuck at a cost of 130 jobs; Sears Holdings, which is closing Sears and Kmart stores in Milford; and Edible Arrangements, which is moving its Wallingford headquarters to Atlanta.

While Florida municipalities have dominated job growth as tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some Northeast communities have fared well including Atlantic City, N.J., which ranked third nationally with 7 percent growth; and the New London area, which led Connecticut with a 2.1 percent increase to crack the top third of metropolitan areas nationally.