A record crowd of more than 560 business leaders packed into the top floor conference room at the downtown Hartford Marriott Friday to hear Connecticut’s 2012 economic outlook, a turnout that signals employers’ optimism.
The half-day summit — hosted by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and MetroHartford Alliance — came on the same day as news that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent, on the addition of 200,000 jobs in December.
Even still, Connecticut is likely in for a few more years of slow economic growth, according to Yale professor and Webster Bank economist Nick Perna.
Perna, who delivered a statewide economic outlook, said he believes Connecticut will experience a largely stagnant economy in 2012, with little to no growth on the jobs front, followed by several years of modest gains.
The state’s economy will be impacted heavily by the European debt crisis and federal actions out of Washington D.C., Perna said.
Connecticut and the rest of the East Coast rely heavily on European countries for trade, so continued turmoil across the pond could weigh down the state’s exports.
Budget cuts on the federal level could also negatively impact the state’s large defense industry, Perna said.
Meanwhile, UConn President Susan Herbst also spoke during the summit about plans to drive economic development at the state’s flagship public university.
Herbst reflected on the $864 million Bioscience Connecticut project, the $125 million UConn Tech Park in Storrs, and the arrival of Jackson Laboratory in Farmington, as forming a strong foundation for future economic development in Connecticut.
Herbst said her goal is to make UConn the center of a vibrant research triangle in Connecticut that connects Storrs, Farmington and New Haven-home to Yale University-in order to compete with the likes of Silicon Valley, North Carolina and Cambridge, Mass.
