Connecticut added around 12,000 job openings in December, a likely encouraging trend for job-seekers but further proof of a labor shortage for the state’s employers, some of whom have been struggling to find workers for months.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Connecticut’s number of unfilled, open positions increased by 11.4% between December 2021 and January 2022, despite a relatively high unemployment rate of 5.3%. The state’s jobless rate has been coming down in recent months, but it remains tied with New York for sixth-highest in the country.
There are now believed to be around 117,000 job openings in Connecticut.
A report from the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, released Thursday, noted that the state is continuing to see a labor mismatch despite the state’s low quit rate.
“If every unemployed Connecticut resident found a job today, we’d still have 18,100 open jobs to fill,” said CBIA president and CEO Chris DiPentima. “The labor crisis is impacting all industries, although it’s particularly acute in highly skilled, high-paying sectors such as financial activities, information and manufacturing.”
CBIA has recommended a number of policy changes to address the problem, including exempting workforce training programs from the state sales and use tax, expanding the state’s manufacturing apprenticeship tax credit program to include small and midsize manufacturers and enhancing workforce development efforts for incarcerated and returning citizens.
An annual analysis of Connecticut’s jobs data, released earlier this month, shows the state dropped its unemployment rate to 5.1% at the end of 2021 before job losses connected to the COVID-19 omicron variant pushed that figure up to 5.3% in January. The state is believed to have added over 50,000 jobs in 2021, but still has not fully recovered from the job losses of March and April 2020, when the state went into lockdown.
