Jobs

Connecticut employment recovering in most job sectors

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Andrew Ba Tran

Data Editor

Connecticut’s private sector saw the biggest drops in employment during the Great Recession – 111,660 lost jobs – but as of November, Connecticut had added back 113,400, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor.

It’s a milestone for Connecticut’s job recovery after nearly six years.


The state added about 5,100 new jobs to the nonfarm sector in November – about 26,800 over the course of the year.

November’s job increase reversed a downward trend in September and October.

Seven of the 10 major “supersectors” tracked by the department added jobs in November, led by 1,500 jobs in leisure and hospitality.

Looking at the ‘supersectors’


Jobs in the crucial financial sector have gone down considerably since 2008, two recessions ago, but stabilized in spring 2014. They have remained consistent since September, and this month’s figures are higher when compared to this time last year.


Jobs in businesses not specifically categorized by the Department of Labor have gone down since October.


November marks the lowest point of 2015 for jobs in the government sector.

This sector also includes employment at the casinos run by tribal governments.


This particular sector continues to grow in Connecticut, independent of the Great Recession.

With nearly 160,000 jobs in the arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, this sector is at its highest since figures became available in 1990.


Education and health services is another sector that continues to see consistent growth.


With 217,000 jobs in the professional and business sector, Connecticut is just 1,000 jobs away from the high of July 2000, years before the Great Recession.


Jobs in the information sector have hovered around 32,000 since 2010.


This sector has seen some slow but consistent growth.


Meanwhile, manufacturing continues to decline, although this month saw a small increase of 800 jobs compared to the previous month.


What do you think?

  • Joseph Brzezinski

    Do you have a way to split education into the education and health components? Growth should be mostly health. Education is probably growing even though school age population is declining.
    Also, are payroll totals available by sectors and sector components? Maybe total payroll would better illustrate where higher paying jobs are being replaced by lower paying ones.

    • 00000000001

      Well Mr. Brzezinski, Majority leader Martin Looney was on Face the State, 2 Sunday’s ago. Looney was lamenting that not enough state income tax revenue was being realized with the new jobs. Doesn’t this tell us that most new jobs are producing lower wages? Too bad Dennis House soft-balled the questions, not getting into why the non-wealthy have a CT state & local tax burden of double & triple of that of the rich, when expressed as a percentage of income.

      • Joseph Brzezinski

        The point of some analysis would be to see how much of the change has been people shifting from higher paying careers to jobs/career that traditionally pay at much lower rates and how much is in jobs/careers/sectors where pay cuts or pay rates have stagnated.

  • Joseph Brzezinski

    Just to get off this subject a bit. I was doing some testing of a new statistical process a while back and used state by state public vs private quarterly employment data which is similar to the CT data for this presentation and found a strong significant association of employment trends to the US presidential terms in office of Bush 1 last term, both Clinton terms,both Bush 2 terms, and the Obama term.
    The CT graphs in this article exhibit some of that asdociation.
    Perhaps some additional research in needed into digging deeper into national trends that overlay long term state trends throughout the country….

    • Andrew Ba Tran

      Hm, what do you think is the reason for the association?

      • Joseph Brzezinski

        Probably multiple reasons related to federal policies of each president’s administration. What laws are in place or put into place impacting outsourcing, international trade, how much laws are enforced, etc. Some impact on federal mandates and transfers of revenue to states would seem logical as states add or decrease staff in response to federal monies. It would be interesting to see other discussions on perceived reasons.