The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State’s private sector adds 5,500 jobs in March
Connecticut’s privatesector employers filled 5,500 openings in March, slightly off the pace of hiring in February but still enough to drop the state’s unemployment rate to 4.6 percent from 4.9 percent in the prior month, a new report showed.
The state Department of Labor reported Thursday that employers are advertising more than 100,000 openings — and just 22,000 people are receiving unemployment compensation while they search for work.
Speaking in East Hartford on Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont said the jobs numbers likely under-report the number of people at growing startups or working on their own, two categories of workers that the monthly government surveys of employers tend to miss.
“I’ve got more job openings than there are unemployed,” Lamont said Thursday. “I’ve got to get more people working.”
Factoring in lower numbers of government jobs, Connecticut’s total net employment gain was 4,600 jobs according to DOL models based on surveys of business establishments. DOL lifted its prior estimate of February job gains to 5,400 in all, including 6,000 in the private sector.
The figures based on monthly surveys of workplaces, for job creation, and households, for employment and unemployment, are preliminary and are subject to revisions at the end of each month and year — revisions that can be extremely large.
Including government jobs, employers supported nearly 1.65 million jobs as of March, according to the preliminary estimates. That’s still well off the 1.7 million people on payrolls in January 2020 just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemic disruptions continue to affect the overall economy, as businesses weigh hiring needs against inflationary pressure they are absorbing on everything from hourly labor costs to rent, raw materials and prices at the pump.
“Economists are watching several key indicators including energy prices, inflation, and the labor shortage,” stated Danté Bartolomeo, commissioner of the Department of Labor, in written commentary Thursday. “We don’t yet know to what extent these could impact the labor market, so we urge any job seeker still on the sidelines to get back into the workforce.”
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent in March, a low level that’s believed to be feeding inflation as scarce employees gain the upper hand in demanding wage hikes.
At its annual Connecticut Business Day advocacy event in Hartford on Tuesday, the Connecticut Business & Industry Association kept the focus on the cost of doing business, including higher unemployment premiums CBIA anticipates companies having to pay as the state looks to rebuild its unemployment insurance trust fund, which was drained during the pandemic.
Lamont has not viewed the UI payments as a priority, at least until assessments come in, instead favoring property tax credits for households, a cap on local motor vehicle taxes and using the state budget surplus to pay down pension liabilities.
“One of the areas where maybe we are just going to have to agree to disagree ... is continuing the funding of the UI debt,” said Chris DiPentima, CEO of CBIA, speaking Tuesday in Hartford. “This falls on the back of businesses — businesses have about $450 million still to pay over the next four years.”
David Lehman, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, said the administration has been wrestling with whether to prioritize helping out with unemployment tax relief or plow available resources into reducing the state’s debt for future pension payouts.
“The pensions have been a big burden of the state for a long time,” Lehman said Tuesday. “It’s really a question of prioritization.”