State adds 5,300 jobs in October

Connecticut gained 5,300 jobs in October — marking the 10th straight month of rising employment in the state, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the Department of Labor.

The state has now recovered about 73 percent of the approximately 292,000 jobs lost in March and April 2020, during shutdowns sparked by the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alongside the jobs increase, the state’s unemployment rate dropped from 6.8 percent in September to 6.4 percent last month. The state’s jobless rate was 3.7 percent in February 2020, the last full month that was not affected by the pandemic.

“Both the job numbers and the unemployment rate continue to move in the right direction,” state labor commissioner Danté Bartolomeo said in a statement. “The jobs numbers especially give us a reason to be optimistic that these trends will carry through the rest of 2021. There is still work to do across all sectors to regain the jobs lost during the pandemic shutdown, but the data signal a stable economic recovery is underway.”

Private sector payrolls rose by 5,900 positions in October, offset by a decline of 600 positions in the government sector. Education and health services, financial activities, professional and business services, as well as leisure and hospitality, accounted for the majority of the job gains. Manufacturing, construction and mining, and information were the only private-sector industries that lost jobs.

“A few notable points with this report: each quarter job growth has accelerated throughout the year, a pattern we expect to continue into the fourth quarter of 2021,” Patrick Flaherty, the labor department’s director of research, said in a statement. “Also, while there’s no doubt that the pandemic severely damaged Connecticut businesses and our workforce, market watchers like to see these kinds of broad job gains that reach across a variety of industry sectors — it’s indicative of a fundamentally healthy economy. It’s going to take time to recover completely.”

The jobs growth and unemployment decline in Connecticut align with a nationwide recovery. Last month, the U.S. added 531,000 jobs, while its unemployment rate dipped 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent.

With the exception of farming, employment has increased nationwide by 18.2 million since April 2020 — but it is still down by 4.2 million, or 2.8 percent, from February 2020. The national unemployment rate stood at 3.5 percent in February 2020.

Business advocacy groups such as the Connecticut Business & Industry Association said it welcomed the job gains, but still had concerns about Connecticut’s economic recovery. CBIA officials pointed to Connecticut’s year-to-date job growth of 2.9 percent, but they noted that it ranked “second-slowest in the region” and trailed a national rate of 4.1 percent.

“While unemployment fell four-tenths to 6.4 percent last month, the labor force is down 27,100 people since January — and 105,400 less than February 2020 — further fueling workforce shortage concerns,” CBIA CEO and President Chris DiPentima said in a statement. “There are 79,500 fewer people working now than in February of last year, despite something on the order of 70,000 job openings. The question is this: ‘Where have these people gone?’”

As it does every month, the Labor Department reported Thursday revisions in the previous month’s numbers. For September, the jobs gain was updated from an original estimate of 4,700 to 6,500.

The labor department also said Thursday that as a result of the unemployment rate dropping below 6.5 percent, it estimated Connecticut would “trigger off ” Extended Benefits by early next year. Extended Benefits is a 13-week extension to regular state unemployment benefits that expires when the state’s three-month average unemployment rate falls below 6.5 percent. Approximately 20,000 of the 45,000 weekly filers in the state for unemployment benefits are currently using Extended Benefits.

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