Connecticut must tread carefully, says top business organization

The state”™s largest business organization, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, is softly applauding modest job growth in 2015 with an added dash of caution heading into 2016 after losing the state”™s top corporate resident, General Electric.

“It’s certainly not a spectacular report, but it is a positive report,” CBIA economist Pete Gioia said of December job numbers.

Gioia notes a mix of positive and negative indicators.

For example, the state gained 300 jobs in December, while unemployment ticked up a tenth of a percentage point, to 5.2 percent.

Year over year, Connecticut has recovered 22,600 jobs, with six of the 10 industry supersectors generating jobs in December. The largest of these gains was in other services with 800 jobs and leisure and hospitality adding 300 jobs.

Smaller gains were also made in information, professional and business services, trade and transportation, and utilities, with each gaining 200 jobs and an additional 100 jobs gained in financial activities.

The government supersector ”“ which includes gaming establishments, Gioia noted ”“ lost 200 jobs.

On the whole, Connecticut has regained 102 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, though this is dampened by the December uptick in unemployment, Gioia said.

“Basically we also saw a fairly weak labor force growth, which certainly affected the unemployment rate,” he said.

With eight out of 12 months in 2015 producing job gains, said Gioia, “it’s important that Connecticut not only continue job gains but even accelerate them, and we really need to make sure that we make the right public policy moves to encourage companies to invest and add jobs.”

Gioia”™s comments on policy follow sharp criticism of the state”™s governing bodies after the recently announced planned departure of Connecticut”™s premier corporate citizen, GE.

CBIA president and CEO Joe Brennan called GE”™s decision to leave Fairfield for Boston “terribly disappointing,” and said lawmakers must treat the company’s decision seriously and not as an isolated case.

“The conditions that led to this decision exist for many companies in Connecticut,” Brennan said in a statement following GE”™s announcement. “Businesses large and small are making investment decisions every day and they are paying close attention to what’s happening in Hartford.”

Brennan said many businesses remain concerned about the state’s short and long-term fiscal issues, which generate widespread uncertainty and a lack of predictability, and the growing burden of costly workplace mandates.

He called last year’s tax increases on businesses, which some legislative leaders later acknowledged were a mistake, the catalyst that led GE and other companies to review their Connecticut operations.

“It was significant that the General Assembly came back into special session not once, but twice, to repair some of the damage caused by the state budget that was approved last June,” he said.

He touts the state”™s recovery of private sector jobs since the recession and the growing economy, but cautions that Connecticut is not out of the danger zone just yet.

“Accelerating that growth and unlocking the state’s enormous potential begins, as Governor Malloy has said, with making Connecticut the most competitive state in the region,” he said. “That’s where the legislature must focus.”