Connecticut’s economy lost 4,600 jobs during the month of June, but the state’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.7%.
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in June, after job growth slowed a bit, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 209,000.
The Connecticut Department of Labor also revised its May job gains upward to 5,300 positions added that month from the 5,000 initially projected. Nonfarm employment totaled 1,687,200 at the end of June, up 1.2% from a year earlier, DOL data shows.
Connecticut DOL Office of Research Director Patrick Flaherty said June is typically a big hiring month, “however, in Connecticut, the warm weather resulted in earlier hiring in both winter and spring of 2023.”
He said the largest June job declines were in the same industries with strong May job gains, including accommodation and food services.
The state saw “a hiring bump in May as restaurants and hotels brought on staff to meet tourism demand, hiring they would normally do in June,” Flaherty said.
Meanwhile, the state’s labor shortage has eased a bit with 90,000 jobs currently available, down from 104,000, according to DOL Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo.
However, employers are still facing challenges in filling open positions, Bartolomeo said.
She also cautioned that the “pandemic and recovery have caused some wide swings in monthly data, making economic trends more valuable to forecasting than a single month’s numbers. Overall, Connecticut’s economy remains solid and stable, with economists monitoring closely for signs of weakening.”
To date, Connecticut has gained 14,100 jobs in 2023, and the state has recovered 96.4% of the jobs lost from the pandemic shutdown in March and April of 2020.
The private sector is 98.1% recovered from the pandemic shutdown, according to the DOL.
Fully recovered sectors include arts, entertainment, recreation, and construction. Finance is not fully recovered; it has lost more than 7,000 jobs since March 2020, DOL said.
