Economist: Conn. should bounce back easier than it did after Great Recession
As Connecticut lurches along its vaccination schedule for portions of the population, an economist predicted Monday that the state could see a quicker rebound than it did from the Great Recession a decade back — due to relatively strong job retention in higher-income jobs such as finance and manufacturing.
The Connecticut Department of Labor reported an official unemployment of 8 percent in December, down from 8.2 percent the month before but still well above the official U.S. rate of 6.7 percent.
With DOL calculating the state having lost 3,400 jobs in December, hospitality and retail layoffs continue to dog Connecticut’s employment outlook, despite thousands of job openings posted on jobs boards. But a Department of Labor economist said Monday that the state could see a quicker recovery than the years after the 2009 recession, depending on how quickly consumers regain confidence in going out to eat, shop, work out or for salon services.
Acknowledging that jobs entered the year moving “in the wrong direction” in lockstep with COVID-19 infection rates, the director of research for the Connecticut Department of Labor said he believes the state will have a quicker recovery to the near-full employment it enjoyed at the start of last year, when the unemployment rate marched toward its March low of 3.4 peres “We can compare the current recession to the Great Recession of 10 years ago, a recession that was really driven by declines in construction, manufacturing and finance — industries that have a very difficult time when a major disruption occurs,” Flaherty said, in a video presentation accompanying the state’s latest jobs numbers. “The sectors that were really hurt in 2020 will have an easier time recovering once the public feels comfortable taking advantage of those serviccent.
and going out to dinner again.”
Economists say both the state and national numbers likely do not capture the full extent of joblessness, given their reliance on surveys to make estimates. Despite more than a million people filing initial claims last year for unemployment compensation, Connecticut’s official estimate of jobless residents peaked in July at 194,300 state residents, well below the actual number receiving compensation at that point.
Last week, Gov. Ned Lamont proposed a new program called CareerConneCT to coordinate shortterm training programs in industries where job demand is higher, to include the life sciences, manufacturing and clean energy sectors. He added that a recent $10 million grant to Capital Workforce Partners in Hartford will be used to train as many as 2,000 people for jobs in manufacturing and information technology.
Speaking Friday as part of a Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s economic summit, Lamont said the state is now in a race against new variants of COVID-19 thought to be far more contagious than the original strain.
“The whole vaccine distribution-manufacturing supply chain is still a black box,” Lamont said. “We’re not going to get our economy back until we give people that confidence that they can get back to work.”