JobsStat

Connecticut’s unemployment rate rose to 6.6 percent during the month of November, according to the state Department of Labor. Although this is slightly below the national average of 6.7 percent, it is still the highest the state has experienced in the last 15 years.

Altogether, the most recent statistics show that employers did away with 5,100 jobs in Connecticut in November. This brought the total number of jobs in the state from October’s 1,698,500 to 1,693,400. In the last 12 months, approximately 10,500 jobs are been lost.

“The national recession has really caught up to us and pulled us down,” said labor economist John Tirinzonie.

The last time unemployment reached 6.6 percent in the state was back in June of 1993, which happened to be around the end of a recession that had been going on since 1989. During this time, over 150,000 Connecticut jobs were lost.

Last months job loss statistics did not catch experts unaware, according to Don Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners LLC and chairman of the Governor’s Economic Advisory Panel.

“The numbers are disconcerting, but not unexpected. We were expecting a minimum of 3,000 job losses,” said Klepper Smith to the Hartford Courant.

“When people start losing their jobs, they not only their ability to pay their bills, but they lose their ability to pay their taxes, which becomes a concern to states and municipalities,” he went on to say. “We’ve got a domestic recession that’s taking on greater definition and stands to get worse before it gets better.”

According to state Labor Department statistics, employers in seven of the ten largest industries in Connecticut cut jobs in November. The greatest of these losses happened in trade, transportation and utilities, where 2,500 jobs were lost.

Another big losses was the manufacturing sector, which cut 900 jobs in Connecticut during November. Since the November of 2007, employers in this area of employment have done away with 3,400 positions.

The only industry that saw the creation of new jobs was educational and health services. Employers in this sector created 600 positions, which means they were unable to make up for the 1,100 jobs lost in the same industry during October.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.