Connecticut shed 1,400 jobs in June
Connecticut lost 1,400 net jobs in June to a level of 1,692,200 seasonally adjusted, according to new data from the state”™s Department of Labor, which also revised the 1,500-job loss in May to a 1,900-job loss. As a result, Connecticut”™s June unemployment rate is at 3.7%, seasonally adjusted, one-tenth of point below the revised May level.
Private-sector employment was the bright spot in this picture, posting an 800-job gain to 1,458,500 jobs over the month of June, and it was up by 6,000 seasonally adjusted jobs from a year ago. The government supersector ”“ which includes federal, state and municipal positions along with public high education and tribal casino employment ”“ dragged the data with a 2,200-job loss to a total of 233,700, and is down 2,000 jobs from one year earlier.
“Changes in school calendars and the timing of summer employment can often make seasonal adjustment of local government difficult,” said Andy Condon, director of the Labor Department’s Office of Research. “We will have to wait until next month to see if this drop in government employment was an anomaly.”
Within Fairfield County, the labor market in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk corridor in June saw the loss of 1,000 jobs and the Danbury area saw no statistical change from the previous month.
Pete Gioia, economic adviser with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, noted that Connecticut was the only New England state to post negative job numbers for June, and he called the latest data a “continuation of a troubling pattern” and diagnosed the state as being in a “jobs funk.”
Gioia also said the one-tenth of a point drop in the state’s unemployment rate was linked to a monthly decline of 3,400 in the labor force and warned this could be the sign of a greater problem.
“That’s another troubling trend,” he said. “It means people are giving up looking for work or are leaving the state.”