Conn. jobless claims see surge at year’s end

Connecticut saw a spike in initial claims for unemployment assistance the week after Christmas, but it’s not immediately known whether it represented a blip in the economic recovery or a new stretch of malaise as the COVID omicron variant blitzes through the population.

While retail layoffs are common after the holidays, in past years in Connecticut they have risen only incrementally heading into the first few weeks of January.

But new claims for jobless aid in Connecticut nearly tripled to about 9,300 during the final week of 2021, according to advance estimates issued Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor.

At close to 6,000 additional claims from the week before, it was the biggest jump since the start of the pandemic and the highest total for any single week since January 2021. Coming out of the 2020 holiday week, initial claims rose by less than 600 from the week before Christmas that year.

Nationally the final week of 2021, DOL tracked bigger single-week increases in initial claims only in New York and Pennsylvania. South Carolina and Georgia were the only two states to see initial claims at least double in a single week, with the totals smaller than Connecticut’s surge in filings.

“Seasonal employment has varied quite a bit over the last several years because of COVID and the associated fall-out,” said Donald Klepper-Smith, a DataCore Partners economist who focuses on the state outlook. “Businesses were also trying to recoup losses suffered since March 2020, and doing what they could to end the year on a positive note, but I think the labor markets will continue to show considerable variation depending how COVID rolls out from here.”

A Connecticut Department of Labor spokesperson said single-week fluctuations are not unusual in any given year, and noted gains in the state job market in recent weeks. The number of people receiving unemployment assistance under state programs had fallen to about 32,100 filers as of mid-December, but was already higher by Christmas with DOL having yet to finalize its numbers as of that date.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor released estimates that employers nationally added nearly 200,000 jobs in December, dropping the U.S. unemployment rate to 3.9 percent from 4.2 percent in November. Connecticut’s unemployment rate was 6 percent in November, with the Connecticut Department of Labor scheduled to release an updated estimate the final week of January.

In DOL’s monthly Connecticut Economic Digest published Thursday with the state Department of Economic and Community Development, a University of Connecticut economist projected the state’s unemployment rate receding to 4 percent in 2023, but said “the easy part is over” in any quick recovery of remaining jobs lost in the pandemic.

“Connecticut saw an outsized drop in labor force participation as many workers quit their jobs during the pandemic’s socalled Great Resignation,” wrote Steve Lanza, an associate professor at UConn. “Coaxing them back may hinge on whether these were mostly millennials and Gen Z workers unhappy with their jobs but who need the income or, in an older-population state like Connecticut, Baby Boomers with life savings who could afford to retire early.”

On Saturday, extended benefits end in Connecticut, one of the four states that still were processing them along with New Jersey, New Mexico and Alaska. Under that program, unemployment claimants in Connecticut have been getting up to 14 weeks of benefits on top of the normal allotment of 27 weeks.

Employers continue to dangle ample numbers of job openings in Connecticut. As of Thursday, Indeed listed more than 80,000 opportunities, including more than 1,200 at YaleNew Haven Health in New Haven, not including its other hospitals in Greenwich, Bridgeport and New London.

Northeast employers received slight relief on one front near the end of 2021 — fewer people quitting their jobs, with DOL calculating a slight decline in November based on surveys, but at a still-escalated rate of 2.2 percent of all workers that month for reasons other than retirement. That compared to 1.5 percent of workers filing notice in November 2020 to take better opportunities elsewhere or a work hiatus.

While no Connecticut employer has reported a mass layoff to the state Department of Labor since early November 2021 — the Hartford cosmetics distributor Beauty Enterprises served notice at the time of 65 job cuts — workers have reported smaller layoffs since then at multiple Connecticut employers, under the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance program. They include the Hartford manufacturer Aquiline Drones, which furloughed workers after disruptions in importing drone parts from overseas; Flabeg Technical Glass, which is closing in Naugatuck; the Windsor health billing firm Meridian Medical Management; and the Franklin Templeton subsidiary K2 Advisors in Stamford.