Connecticut lost 1,400 jobs in June as government employment dropped sharply, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Labor officials also downgraded their May estimate of 1,500 jobs lost by another 400 positions, down to 1,900 jobs.
Despite these losses, Connecticut’s unemployment rate shrank by one-tenth of one percentage point and is now at 3.7 percent.
The unemployment rate reflects how many people are working in Connecticut.This includes those seeking work as well as those that are actually employed. Connecticut’s jobless population has declined significantly over the first half of the calendar year.
“June’s loss of 1,400 jobs was driven primarily by a large loss in government employment, almost all of which came from local government,” said Andy Condon, director of the Labor Department’s Office of Research. “Private sector employment actually grew by 800 jobs. Changes in school calendars and the timing of summer employment can often make seasonal adjustment of local government difficult. We will have to wait until next month to see if this drop in government employment was an anomaly.”
Connecticut now has recovered 79.3 percent, or 95,400, of the 120,300 jobs lost in the last recession, which ran from March 2008 through January 2010.
The private sector has recovered 101 percent, or 113,000, of the 112,000 jobs lost in the last recession.
Don Klepper-Smith, an economist with DataCore Partners, said his analysis of the latest job data shows Connecticut is on pace to recover all jobs lost in the last recession until late 2021.
But Klepper-Smith, who was the state’s chief economic adviser in the late 2000s under Gov. M. Jodi Rell, said that “the odds are that both Connecticut and the nation are apt to be encountering a full-blown national recession prior to full job recovery in Connecticut, which raises serious questions about the state’s fiscal health over the near-term.”
Four of the state’s 10 major industry super-sectors gained employment in June, led by education and health services, which added 1,600 jobs. Gains also were recorded in: financial activities, professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality.
While the government super-sector experienced the largest decline, job losses also were recorded in trade, transportation and utilities, construction and mining, other services, and information.
Employment in the manufacturing super-sector largely was unchanged in June.
What this ignores is the loss of more than 3,000 jobs by CT residents. The are two employment numbers–one for payrolls in CT, which includes a lot of folks who live out-ot-state, and employment of CT residents, many of whom work out-of-state. Employment of RESIDENTS has declined from an historic high in February by more than 16,000–whereas employment IN Connecticut has declined by only 2500 since February–and actually grew through April.
And what is more important is what is happening in the real economy–that is, measured in terms of output, not employment. We gained jobs 2010-2018, but the real economy SHRANK nearly 10%. In 2018 we didn’t gain many jobs, but we actually had modest real growth. Reports often conflate employment and economic growth–they can move in the opposite directions–and ignore the difference between in-state payrolls and employment of residents.
And further, “government” employment includes casino employment but isn’t broken out, so difficult to understand the public sector trend as opposed to the private (casino) sector employment trend.
I cant seem to understand how CT keeps losing jobs and yet the unemployment rate drops.
Hi IamMeA, the unemployment rate is determined, in part, by the number of people in the workforce. If the number of people who drop out of the workforce (i.e. stop actively looking for work) is higher than the number of people who lose their jobs, then the unemployment rate can actually decrease even if there is net job loss.