Connecticut jobs grow, accordin to labor stats

Posted on March 19, 2012

The state of Connecticut jobs looks bright, according to recent stats.

The job market got off to a good start in January, growing 7,100 total nonfarm jobs over a revised decline in December 2011 of 1,000. As a result of the benchmark revisions, yearly job growth in December 2011 declined slightly from 9,000 to 7,800, but as of January 2012, Connecticut’s year-over-year job growth climbed to 11,900. The state’s unemployment rate continued recent declines to 8.0%, down 0.1 points from the revised December 2011 figure.

“The region’s mild winter appears to be helping job growth in Connecticut across many industries, including construction, manufacturing, and trade,” noted Andy Condon, Director of the Office of Research. “Unemployment continues to decline, though unlike in recent months, our labor force also shrank slightly. Although we still have fewer people in Connecticut’s labor force than we did a year ago, we appear to be on a trend to close that gap.”

Nonfarm Jobs: The Connecticut January 2012 total nonfarm job estimate expanded significantly by 7,100 positions or 0.4%. Since January 2011, the state has added 11,900 jobs (0.7%) for a current employment level of 1,630,600. Following the annual benchmarking process, the preliminary December jobs estimate for Connecticut of a 600 increase was revised to a decline of 1,000 (-0.1%, 1,623,500).

The annual benchmark revises job estimates based on a more complete count of jobs than is available when the sample estimates were originally made. Traditionally, the benchmark revision process is done annually, prior to estimating January data and this pushes back the release of state January data to mid-March.