As Conn. diners head indoors, restaurant job losses below fears

As Connecticut restaurants get ready to prop open their doors Wednesday for regular table service, new unemployment data suggest that, while severe, the hospitality sector’s layoffs fell short of the earliest doomsday predictions.

Nearly a month after Gov. Ned Lamont allowed restaurants to begin offering outdoor table service, the sector hits its next big milestone on Wednesday with the resumption of limited indoor seating. Among other precautions, restaurants must keep guest capacity to half normal levels; erect barriers between tables and booths if spaced within six feet; increase the exchange of air from outdoors; and require the use of face masks save for when diners are seated at their tables or bar perches.

As was the case for Connecticut industries as a whole, pandemic-induced unemployment peaked during the last week of April for the food and accommodations sector, with just over 54,000 workers in line for jobless benefits that week, according to a running weekly total published by the Connecticut Department of Labor.

That amounted to about 17 percent of all state residents getting unemployment benefits that week, down from 23 percent after Lamont forced restaurants to close in March but still more than twice the normal levels.

In the early days of the crisis, Lamont expressed the fear that at least 100,000 hospitality workers could be out of work permanently. But with some restaurant owners taking loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, many job cuts were avoided.

Over the past few weeks, Lamont has cited pending PPP obligations in the need to allow businesses to reopen, while ensuring safeguards against any spread of COVID-19, which in a few states has prompted renewed closures.

“The good news is ... I don’t think we opened too early,” Lamont said Tuesday. “We can feel more confident about opening up restaurants . ... Outdoor dining has worked pretty successfully over the last four weeks.”

DOL has yet to publish a final tally of continuing claims for unemployment beyond May 10, and past May 17 for initial jobless claims. For the week of May 24, when some eateries resumed outdoor dining, about 1,150 restaurant and food service industry workers put in new claims for unemployment, with DOL’s count still ongoing as of Tuesday.

Since the resumption of outdoor dining, Connecticut has continued to see dwindling new cases of coronavirus, including in Norwalk which reported just two new diagnosed cases on Monday.

Matt Storch, the owner of Match in South Norwalk, said that with the resumption of indoor service coupled with nearly a dozen tables outside, his restaurant will be at about 80 percent of its normal capacity on evenings when the weather is cooperating.

With a PPP loan outstanding, Storch said he is keeping a close eye on business trends in the coming month or two, and is hopeful the state will allow additional inside capacity before long — while allowing for continued expanded outdoor dining, which has caught on for many eateries.

“It’s been going well — people love it,” Storch said of the outdoor tables for Match. “Some are skittish, some are not.”

Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media Diners enjoy lunch outdoors in one of the “nodes” outside La Fenice Gelateria on Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich on Monday. Restaurants have outdoor seating in place and now the town is hoping to allow other merchants to go outside their stores as well.