A shot in the arm?
COVID-19 vaccines may help boost Conn. job listings
A year into the pandemic, Connecticut employers have yet to create jobs at the same pace they were doing in the first weeks of 2020.
Employers posted about 4,200 new job openings online the final week of February, according to The Conference Board, a nonprofit business research group organization — down about a third from a year ago.
Last week, Gov. Ned Lamont lifted capacity restrictions starting March 19 for stores, eateries and leisure venues such as museums, and Congress is likely to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan sought by President Biden this week.
But one big question remains: Will people resume normal activities — masked up, and with six feet of separation — that in turn will prompt employers to begin hiring some of the 200,000 residents looking for work?
“We built the American Rescue Plan by building up from the bottom of the American economy — by putting money into the middle class and into poor families’ pocketbooks,” U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., said at a news conference on Monday. “We know that those people are going to take that money and go out and spend it — in small businesses, in restaurants, in retailers all around the state. We think this is a plan to power this economy to close to full employment.”
That translates to an extra 100,000 jobs that Connecticut employers are not staffing today — and the accompanying assumption that income will recover for some 38,000 selfemployed workers who are currently drawing jobless benefits, as authorized under last year’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
As of January, however, Connecticut employers had posted less than 50,000 openings online. And the unemployment trends are headed in the direction, with about 3,000 more people drawing unemployment benefits as of mid-February compared to the start of the year.
Joblessness continued to balloon through mid-February for workers at hotels, restaurants and retail stores, with only the catch-all industry category of trade — including trucking and parcel fulfillment companies like Amazon — seeing a major decline in people getting unemployment assistance, according to fresh figures Monday from the state Department of Labor.
As of mid-February, more than 28,500 restaurant, hotel and catering workers were getting unemployment aid, with less than 600 new jobs posting over the subsequent three weeks. About 19,500 people in the retail sector had been sidelined, against only 1,400 new openings over the succeeding weeks.
And while leisure and entertainment venues saw a small surge with just over 100 new job opportunities, that would make a small dent in the nearly 5,000 in the sector who remain on furlough.
There were select signs of a spring thaw in new job postings. In each of the final two weeks of February, fresh jobs surfaced at double the prior week’s rate for the hospitality and entertainment sectors.
But retail employment worsened, and statewide manufacturing job postings declined, despite an ongoing hiring push at General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine yard in Groton.
Even health care was seeing lower new job postings a year after the pandemic’s arrival, with hospitals, clinics, nursing facilities and other sector employers seeking fewer than 200 registered nurses as of the last week of February, versus nearly 700 a year in March 2020.
“We do recognize that the effects of COVID-19 and the effects of this economic crisis are going to last beyond 2021,” Murphy said. “We want to stretch out support for small businesses, so we can give businesses an on-ramp to sustainability.”