Much of Conn. lags behind rest of U.S. in personal income growth
Connecticut’s commuter corridor running from Greenwich to Bridgeport held on to its perch as the second most affluent in the United States last year, but the region stretching from Hartford to Middletown saw one the slowest growth rates in the nation for personal income.
For 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis calculated a 7.3 percent increase in per-capita income in metropolitan areas of the United States, according to BEA estimates released Wednesday. The BEA study includes both employer-based pay as well as income from investments like stocks and real estate, both skyrocketing in value last year before flattening in 2022.
Despite Connecticut’s concentrations of wealthy earners statewide, only the New Haven-Milford region topped the U.S. average — and only barely with a 7.5 percent bump in per-capita income to a little over $64,600 in annual income.
While earners in the Stamford-Norwalk-Bridgeport corridor produced nearly double that income at $127,400 on a per-capita basis, the region only barely cracked the top 200 for earnings growth at 6.9 percent.
And the Hartford and New London regions ranked near the bottom of the U.S. for per-capita income growth, at 4.4 percent and 4.3 percent respectively. Among nearly 40 metropolitan areas in the Northeast, the only locale to see slower growth was Burlington, Vt.
Republican gubernatorial challenger Bob Stefanowski failed to win over voters with his central campaign theme — that lower income earners are worse off today than they were in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that unleashed runaway inflation that has crimped spending power for many.
Voters in 45 municipalities flipped their support to Lamont in the 2022 elections, after Stefanowski won a majority in 2018. That included money centers like Greenwich, Darien, Avon and Shore Line East towns from Madison to Old Lyme.
But with runaway prices in an already high-cost state, families living paycheck to paycheck are struggling. In September, the CEO of the Greenwich United Way said that even in one of the nation’s wealthiest towns, a third of residents are “a flat tire away from financial disaster.”
On Tuesday in Hartford, Lamont said he expects to reach an agreement with Connecticut General Assembly members on an extension of a holiday on gasoline taxes in Connecticut, which is currently scheduled to expire in December, and free bus fares for cities that wish to offer it.
“Right now its going about $1 million a day,” Lamont said of the tax revenue Connecticut is losing by offering the gas tax. “We can’t keep that going forever, but we’re trying to find a way that we phase [it] down.”
But that adds up to $1 million a day in extra cash for households and businesses that are paying far higher amounts to heat buildings this winter, whether their furnaces use oil or natural gas.
And many consumers nationally continue to spend, whether on dining out or in travel despite far higher prices for air fares. On Wednesday, Walt Disney announced ticket price hikes for its Florida theme parks that are a major draw in the colder months for Connecticut travelers.
“Our [third-quarter] cancellation rates continue to be below 2019 levels,” said David Goulden, chief financial officer of travel website giant Booking Holdings based in Norwalk, speaking two weeks ago on a conference call. “We have not seen a change in the mix of hotel star ratings being booked, or changes in length of stay, that could indicate that consumers are trending down.”