Report: County workforce profile lags
In early September, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is slated to board a flight for Tianjin, China, where Farmington-based Otis Elevator Co. is among those officially designated as “industrial tourism” sites.
The $20,000 question ”“ the cost of Malloy”™s trip ”“ is whether Connecticut can match Tianjin”™s pace in producing workers skilled for precision manufacturing and other high-end venues.
In a new ranking of the top metropolitan areas for workforce vitality published by Area Development, lower Fairfield County did not crack the top 250 areas nationally, despite an economy anchored by a diverse mix of businesses that would be the envy of many regions that finished at the top of the ranking.
Columbus, Ind. received top honors in Area Development”™s ranking of the 356 largest metropolitan areas for the attractiveness of their workforce profile, with Boston leading Northeast cities with a top 25 ranking nationally.
The Hartford area just missed cracking the top 100 nationally and finished a few slots ahead of metropolitan New York City and outlying areas on Long Island and in northern New Jersey.
In Connecticut, New Haven also easily bested the Stamford-Bridgeport region in Area Development”™s methodology, which used more than 20 separate economic indicators to rank cities, including the vitality of their economies and their track record in attracting younger workers.
The only area in which Fairfield County clobbered the competition was in the arena of wage and salary growth over a five-year period through February 2012, ranked in the top 10 metropolitan areas in the country on that front.
The study came as Malloy enjoys one of the top economic development coups in recent memory ”“ a commitment by Bridgewater Associates to add as many as 1,000 finance jobs at a new headquarters in Stamford. The announcement also came and amid muddled economic data. In August, the state Department of Labor reported a sharp increase in Connecticut”™s unemployment rate, despite estimates of significant job gains in manufacturing, hospitality and several other sectors.
Connecticut calculates its unemployment rate from three primary sources:
Ӣ residentsӪ responses to an ongoing household survey;
Ӣ the number of people filing claims for unemployment insurance; and
Ӣ estimates of the stateӪs actual job total, excluding farms.
The inclusion of the household survey results ensures that people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits are represented in the estimate of unemployed state residents; and also accounts for new entrants or re-entrants into the workforce; those who exhaust unemployment benefits and are still looking for work; and those found ineligible for benefits or who simply choose not to file.
Malloy said in a statement that he is skeptical of the July unemployment figures, noting the discrepancy between an employer survey suggesting Connecticut added more than 5,000 private-sector jobs that month, and a household survey that came up with an estimate of more than 15,000 jobs lost.
“That”™s a difference of more than 20,000 jobs,” Malloy said. “A gap of this magnitude between these two surveys has never happened in the 22 years they”™ve been conducted. To buy into the household survey number, you”™d have to believe that Connecticut lost 503 jobs every day during the month of July, and there”™s just no evidence to suggest that happened. Unemployment claims have drifted upward, but not at a rate that justifies the household survey number.”
As the case with some economists, Malloy suggested the sharp increase in the unemployment rate was more the result of large numbers of people seeking work once more on optimism they will find a job, inflating the baseline number from which the unemployment rate is calculated.
“The phrase ”˜worst economic downturn since the Great Depression”™ is used so often, we”™ve become immune to the words,” Malloy said. “But they”™re true. So, it should come as a surprise to no one that pulling the country and our state out of that downturn is hard ”“ really hard. But let me be clear: We are making progress.”