The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Despite gains, Conn. is lagging
Newreports suggest jobs belowaverage
WASHINGTON — Connecticut’s political leaders never miss an opportunity to praise the state’s progress as an advancedmanufacturing powerhouse.
Sen. Chris Murphy regularly features Connecticut’s burgeoning new industries in his weekly “Murphy’s Monday Manufacturer” email.
And recently, Sen. Richard Blumenthal paid a call on Connecticut to computer Tool & Manufacturing science, in but we are Plainville, the Silicon makers of Valley of parts and advanced equipment for manufacturing,” bigname defense contractors Lamont like said soon Sikorsky, and after winning Pratt & Whitney. his first term
Gov. Ned in Hartford Lamont is last trying to get November. in on the act. But a “We’re not new report Silicon Valley suggests when it comes that other regions of the country, particularly in theWest and South, are the major beneficiaries of an uptick in U.S. manufacturing between 2016 and 2018. The sector added 465,200 manufacturing jobs in that time frame, the largest advance since before the 20072008 Great Recession.
Approximately 4,500 manufacturers employ over 157,700 private sector employees in Connecticut, as of 2017. That number ticked up to 160,800 by the beginning of 2019.
Of the top 20 counties leading the U.S. in manufacturing growth between 2016 and 2018, none were in Connecticut or anywhere in the Northeast. Rather, the nonpartisan Economic Innovation Group, a D.C. think tank that focuses on regional inequality, found that Texas and California dominated the top 20.
In that same time period, Connecticut upped its number of manufacturing jobs by 2.8 percent. But that was still below the national average of 3.7 percent.
“After a tumultuous start to the new century, manufacturing in the United States has not only stabilized but become a reliable contributor to U.S. job and output growth,” the study concluded.
“Yet below the national level, the story is far more complicated,” it said. “Whether or not manufacturing’s comeback feels real varies from one county to the next.”
Hartford County, for instance, was in first place among the top three jobgaining areas of the Northeast, the report showed. At the same time, the state as a whole had 68 percent of the manufacturing jobs it had in 2000 ranking 33rd out of 50 states.
Approximately 4,500 manufacturers employ over 157,700 private sector employees in Connecticut, as of 2017. That number ticked up to 160,800 by the beginning of 2019.
Connecticut had around 300,000 manufacturing jobs in 1990, according to the state’s Department of Labor.
The Economic Innovation Group’s report garnered wide attention and was the basis of a New York Times business story last month with the headline: “Growth in Jobs Skips Traditional Hubs.”
Study coauthor Kenan Fikri said part of the explanation for Connecticut’s lackluster showing is that researchers also factored in job losses over time, which had the effect of offsetting job gains.
Since states such as California and Texas did not have the long tradition of manufacturing as an economic mainstay, their gains were more pronounced, he said.
“When you are building on a blankslate economy, you only have jobs to add,” he said.
By contrast, Connecticut still has not shaken off the legacy of its old manufacturing economy in a tailspin.
“You’d be amazed at how many lingering cufflinkmakers dot the landscape in that part of the country,” Fikri said.
Manufacturing in Connecticut does have a distinct advantage: Major military contractors including Electric Boat, Sikorsky and Pratt & Whitney employ thousands of bluecollar workers. And their critical mass in Connecticut has spawned a network of advancedmanufacturing suppliers.
Electric Boat, the Grotonbased maker of U.S. Navy submarines (one of two in the nation), has a network of 900 suppliers in Connecticut, according to the state’s Office of Military Affairs.
In 2017, the office calculated, the value of military contracting in Connecticut was $23 billion, of which $6.7 billion went to Pratt & Whitney (most of it for its F35 jetfighter engine).
The state’s Aerospace Components Manufacturing group lists well over 100 manufacturers in what it calls “Aerospace Alley” _ a concentration along the I91 corridor from north of New Haven to the Connecticut Massachusetts border.
Among those outside the corridor are Altek Electronics of Torrington, Colonial Coatings of Milford, MetLTest of Stratford, and two from Bridgeport: Horberg Industries and DeltaRay Industries.
Countybycounty data compiled by the group’s researchers generally shows that Connecticut’s manufacturing economy has not gained back the losses from the Great Recession of 20072008.
Fairfield County lost a net of 23 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 2008 and 2018. New Haven County lost 22 percent, and Litchfield County lost 8 percent.
Only Middlesex County saw a rise in manufacturing jobs up 1 percent.
State officials are unfazed by any such numbers, pointing out that the new manufacturing economy needs many fewer workers than the older one.
“There are misconceptions about what the work entails,” said Matthew Krzyzek, a state DOL economist. “Advanced manufacturing is not like the typical industrial revolution manufacturing that people are familiar with.”
But even though manufacturers no longer need massive numbers of workers as in days gone by, the major issue confronting employers is a lack of trained personnel to fill job vacancies, Krzyzek said.
With an aging workforce and the need for replacements to be skilled in math and computers, the onus is on technical high schools and twoyear colleges like Housatonic Community College and Naugatuck Valley Community College to turn out qualified workers.
A state DOL survey of online job listings showed 5,364 such ads in May for manufacturing positions in the state, Krzyzek said.
“Generally speaking, manufacturing is headed in the right direction here in Connecticut,” he said.