With plenty of open jobs, where are the workers?

As Gov. Ned Lamont and Republican challenger Bob Stefanowski highlight their ideas on how Connecticut can capitalize on its .proximity to New York and Massachusetts, all three states share one significant point of pain — increases in the percentage of people looking for work today compared to the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Connecticut, Delaware and Maine have seen the slowest recovery in unemployment compared to just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, of the swath of states from Maryland north to New England. That has occurred despite those three states trailing only Massachusetts for job openings that exist today compared to February and March 2020 at the outset of the pandemic.

If the unemployment rate is top of mind for those who would take the right job today at the right pay, a balloon of job openings reflects the challenges employers have in hiring people at the pay they are able or willing to offer.

On the eve of the October sprint to Election Day, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated Connecticut’s unemployment rate at 4 percent, with roughly 114,000 job openings inside the state’s borders. That compared to a 3.4 percent jobless rate and 66,000 job openings in March 2020, just prior to the temporary closure of many businesses after Lamont declared a public health emergency to contain the spread of COVID-19.

In the intervening 18 months Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Maryland have all seen unemployment drop below pre-pandemic levels, and New Jersey is near even with its jobless rate of March 2020. But Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts continue to lag the pack, despite Connecticut’s 73 percent boom in job openings over that stretch, and Massachusetts employers nearly doubling their openings.

Speaking in late September at a Quinnipiac University candidate forum, Stefanowski said Connecticut’s high cost of living is the largest factor impacting employment today, including housing expenses and taxes.

“If you want young people to stay here, you got to make it more affordable,” Stefanowski said. “We have $6 billion budget surplus in Hartford . ... Why wouldn’t we give some of that back?”

If that surplus was bolstered by federal pandemic assistance, Lamont said either way his priority entering office four years ago was to extract Connecticut from annual budget crises that had weakened the confidence of businesses leery of tax hikes, and ratings agencies that price the loans Connecticut relies on to fund projects.

“First thing I had to do was get our fiscal house in order,” Lamont said. “That’s a precondition to getting our economy going again.”

Lamont said the large numbers of unfilled jobs depict a strong economy, needing only more people to enter the workforce.

“I made the biggest commitment to workforce development — by a factor of five — in the history of the state,” Lamont said. “Businesses large and small are helping us put together what’s the job-training specs that you need.”

But not all neighboring states are struggling on that front. Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania all touched record lows for joblessness this year, with Connecticut having last done so in August 2000. Only four states have longer histories since their last low mark of unemployment: Michigan, North Carolina, Delaware and Wyoming.

Speaking last month at a Connecticut Business & Industry Association economic forum, CEO Chris DePentima suggested how Connecticut leverages its current “sound fiscal situation” in his words will set up the state’s economic performance for an extended run, for better or for worse.

“Today our economy faces no greater threat than the labor shortage,” DePentima said.