Conn. employers add jobs, but openings edge down
Connecticut employers enjoyed a hiring boom in November, with the state filling 6,200 jobs on a net basis after lackluster hiring the month before.
The Connecticut Department of Labor reported survey results on Thursday that suggest broad hiring across the state economy, sending the unemployment rate down a tenth of a percentage point to 4.2 percent.
DOL had estimated Connecticut employers hiring 500 people on a net basis in October, but revised that number downward to a loss of 1,100 jobs that month. That put the net gain for Connecticut at about 4,600 jobs since seasonal hiring ramped up in October.
In a separate report this month, the U.S. Department of Labor included Connecticut among 15 states that saw job openings drop in October.
For the first time since the start of the school year when bus drivers got back to work, initial claims for unemployment assistance in Connecticut topped 3,500 filings, for two consecutive weeks crossing into December. But initial claims remain in line with their December 2021 totals, and the total number of all people receiving jobless benefits is well below last spring, at less than 19,400 people.
Multiple Connecticut employers have been cutting jobs in the past several months, including Stanley Black & Decker, Sema4, M&T Bank and CooperAtkins. And in Stratford, Sikorsky and its suppliers were thrown into flux after the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a contract to arch-rival Bell to build replacements for the U.S. Army’s fleet of Black Hawk helicopters, with potentially thousands of jobs hanging in the balance as the company mulls any appeal of the award.
But far more are full steam ahead in hiring mode, with hundreds of open jobs at Hartford Healthcare, Yale-New Haven Health, Raytheon Technologies subsidiaries Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney, General Dynamics Electric Boat, Cigna, and ASML among others.
Large numbers of workers remain on the sidelines, however. Connecticut’s October labor “participation” rate of 64.5 percent of the possible workforce was well below the rate employers enjoyed in October 2019, when 67.2 percent of people were held jobs who were willing and able to work.
Workforce participation peaked in the autumn of 1991 at 71.3 percent of people who potentially could take jobs, the fifth best rate in the nation at that point. Connecticut now ranks 15th.
Next month, Connecticut kicks off a trio of programs intended to beat the bushes better for people who, with extra training, could qualify for higher paying jobs with employers that have exacting requirements, in industries like health, manufacturing and information technology.
Through the $70 million CareerConneCT program, Connecticut is offering free training through a number of workforce investment boards and other groups. Under the Good Jobs Challenge funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Connecticut is designing training programs with direct input from employers on what they are looking for.
And Connecticut Health Horizons is focused exclusively on jobs for health and social services, though many of those jobs continue to be left unfilled given pay considerations or the arduous workdays involved in some instances.
“Over the next three years, we expect these programs will provide career opportunities for at least 8,000 people,” said Mark Argosh, chair of the Governor’s Workforce Council, during a virtual meeting last week.
But that would only chip away at the state’s inventory of open jobs paying $80,000 annually or more, with Indeed listing nearly 25,000 such openings as of Thursday. After that, Connecticut would have to get higher numbers of new graduates choosing to stay put or come back home, while qualifying for available work; convince parents who are currently sitting out the job market in the prime of their careers to jump back in; or build on the initial influx of people moving to Connecticut during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An Accenture executive told the Governor’s Workforce Council last week that the information-technology giant is turning increasingly to apprenticeships — long the arena of builders and manufacturers — to get trained employees in the ranks.
“In North America, 20 percent ... of all hires that we are doing this year are apprentices,” said Ryan Oakes, a Guilford resident and Connecticut College graduate who chairs Accenture’s global health and public services practice. “We hire lots of people with college degrees every year too and we look for talent there. But in this particular model, we look for skills as opposed to degrees.”