A wonderful thing happened in August. To hear state leaders tell it, Connecticut surged in jobs and our employment hit a historical zenith. The great PR machine went into overdrive, with both the state labor department and the governor’s office firing out celebratory notices. The newswires went hip-hooray, and the message was spread in ink and pixels all across our state.
Of course, another way to look at it is that little Johnny went back to school in August, and so did his teachers.
Last week, the state Department of Labor released its August employment stats, ballyhooing the news that nonfarm employment hit an all time high of 1,701,600. That’s up 1,200 jobs from July’s number, and about 900 more than the previous high in July 2000.
Some argue that jobs in Connecticut are created by businesses, not government leaders. Let’s not be churlish. If we’re going to slam the governor and the legislature when employment tanks, we’ve got to tip our hat when it advances. And, in this case especially, those naysayers couldn’t be more wrong.
It was not companies propelling the latest run up in jobs, it was government. Employment in many business sectors declined, such as a loss of several hundred jobs in the financial sector thanks to the great subprime mortgage mess. But while construction, transportation, insurance and others were all busy paring back on the payroll, local governments were putting some 1,300 teachers back on the books.
Of course, every job counts — even ones dependent on the public tax rolls. But if every job counts, then the labor report maybe wasn’t as rosy as its proponents would have us believe.
Teacher employment is cyclical, and dependable. We’re pretty confident school is going to start again every Autumn. But we ought to be very concerned about the continuing drop in manufacturing jobs. That sector shed some 400 positions in August, and is down 1,600 jobs since the start of the year. Most of those losses have come in the computer and electronics manufacturing subsets.
Got that? The area that every other state is counting on as a growth engine — the high tech market — is the one we’re losing faster than any other. We’re pretty good at making airplane parts, but we’re not growing other critical industries.
With all these teachers we have, maybe we ought to start learning that lesson — and how to read statistics.