Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz today said Connecticut businesses continued their record march toward extinction during the third quarter.
The business-failure news comes one day after the state labor department revealed Connecticut lost 6,600 jobs in September, pushing its unemployment rate to 8.4 percent.
Another 2,601 Businesses filed papers to dissolve in the three months ended Sept. 30, a record for third-quarter shutdowns, said Bysiewicz, whose office is the state’s principal business registrar.
The number of business closings from July 1 through Sept. 30 brings this year’s total to 9,545 — a record for the first nine months of any year since closures were first recorded in 2000.Â
On the plus side, third-quarter business failures fell 25 percent from the second quarter, Bysiewicz said.
Meanwhile, 6,624 new businesses incorporated in the third quarter, an increase of 2.4 percent from startups in the year-ago third quarter, she said. Overall, Connecticut has seen 20,494 new business starts for the first nine months of this year, a decrease of 5.8 percent from 2008 figures.
“I see some reason for optimism in the fact that we had more new businesses starting up in Connecticut last quarter than we did a year ago and the number of business shut downs dropped sharply from the second quarter to the third quarter of this year,” Bysiewicz said. “Our economy is recovering slowly but this is obviously still a very challenging climate for any business trying to succeed.”
