The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
CT loses jobs in Dec., but posts gain for 2022
Connecticut lost 1,600 jobs in December, while its unemployment rate held steady, according to preliminary data released Monday by the state Department of Labor — a decline that department officials attributed to factors such as seasonal layoffs and interest rate hikes.
Last month’s decrease resulted from a drop of 1,600 positions in local government, as temporary poll workers hired for Election Day on Nov. 8 were gone by December, according to the labor department.
The employment decline ended an 11-month run of job growth in Connecticut. The reduction also confirms that the state will not regain until at least sometime in 2023 all of the approximately 289,000 positions that it lost as a result of shutdowns in the spring of 2020, during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recovery rate is now about 89 percent.
Labor department officials said that they were still encouraged by the job market in 2022, although other economic experts expressed more concerns. Last year, the state added more than 32,000 jobs — a gain of 2 percent, compared with a national uptick of 3 percent — and lowered its unemployment rate by nearly one percentage point.
“In 2022, Connecticut saw strong job gains, an expanding labor force and declines in unemployment,” Patrick Flaherty, the labor department’s director of research, said in a written statement. “The Federal Reserve is attempting to slow the national economy to lower inflation, and Connecticut is participating in that slowdown as job growth slowed toward the end of the year. However, the low level of unemployment claims and the high level of job openings indicate that if the nation is able to avoid recession, Connecticut will see continued job gains in 2023.”
The approximately 1.67 million payroll jobs that the state recorded last month trailed the 1.70 million positions that it had in February 2020, the last full month before Connecticut recorded a COVID-19 case, and its total of 1.72 million in March 2008, at the start of the state’s 2008-2010 recession.
“The pace of Connecticut’s job growth is simply not meeting the demands of our economy,” Chris DiPentima, chief executive officer and president of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, said in a written statement. “At 2 percent, our 2022 job growth rate is one of the region’s slowest and trails the national rate by a full percentage point, while our pandemic (job) recovery rate is 89 percent, well behind the U.S. at 106 percent.”
Connecticut will get a clearer picture of its labor market in March, when the state and federal labor departments revise the previous year’s estimates. Final numbers can differ dramatically from the preliminary data.
While the state’s job total shrunk, its unemployment rate last month remained unchanged from the November level of 4.2 percent, while it was down from 5.1 percent in December 2021. Nationwide, the unemployment rate last month ran at 3.5 percent.
In November, the mostrecent month for aggregated federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data on states’ unemployment levels, Connecticut had the joint-ninth-highest unemployment rate. Among neighboring states, the jobless rate was 3.4 percent in Massachusetts, 4.3 percent in New York and 3.6 percent in Rhode Island.
At the same time, many businesses are still struggling to find enough people to fill their openings. Across the state, employers are hiring for more than 100,000 jobs, according to the labor department.
“We have 102,000 job openings in the state — yet where are the workers?” DiPentima said. “Our labor force has declined by 53,700 people since February 2020, more than one-third of the region’s losses. Even if every unemployed person was hired tomorrow, we’d still have over 21,000 unfilled positions.”
The department also reported that fewer than 30,000 people are filing for weekly unemployment benefits, while the state’s labor force participation rate “remains more than 2 percent higher than the U.S. average labor force participation rate.”
As shown by Connecticut having one of the highest labor participation rates in the country and one of the lowest quit rates, employers are providing good career opportunities, according to DiPentima.
But he added that, “our workforce development efforts must go beyond skills training and encouraging people to rejoin the labor force. It’s critical that we also focus on attracting more people to Connecticut.”
All of the state’s 10 sectors finished 2022 with annual job gains, except financial activities and “other services.” The manufacturing, construction, and transportation and warehousing sectors have recouped all the jobs that they lost during the early stages of the pandemic, according to the labor department.
As it does every month, the department also revised the previous month’s data. The initially released job gain of 6,200 for November was adjusted to an increase of 2,900. The November survey week ran through Election Day and counted poll workers and other oneday jobs.
“In 2022, Connecticut added jobs faster than any year since 1996,” Department of Labor Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo said in a written statement. “This strong growth created a historically high number of jobs available in the state and, with low unemployment, employers continue to be challenged by a smaller workforce. U.S. Treasury economic priorities and inflation are among the issues that we’re watching going into 2023.”