Connecticut lost 400 net jobs during February 2019 and the news of a 1,000 job gain in January was revised by the state”™s Department of Labor into a loss of 2,500. Despite this downward movement, the state”™s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.8 percent.
Andy Condon, director of the Office of Research, explained that the drastic revision in the January data was “partly due to the normal revision process as more data became available for the sample and partly due to a correction to estimates on our construction supersector.”
Joe Brennan, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, pointed out that the state also recently released its final 2018 employment numbers, dropping the initially reported 19,000 job gain down to 10,000, with the original statistic of a 23,100 private-sector job gain shrunken to 9,700. Brennan warned that the current legislative session is not paying attention to this data.
“These numbers confirm that Connecticut is still mired in low economic growth and job creation, well below the national average and much of the New England region,” Brennan said. “Lawmakers should be alarmed by the fact that the national economy is growing and Connecticut has only gained back 80 percent of the jobs lost in the last recession, and they need to act accordingly. There are so many agendas right now that call for higher costs, for more mandates and more regulatory burdens. All of these proposals will only exacerbate the job growth problem. Legislators must focus on what they can do to grow our economy and not further slow it down.”
