About 123,500 people in Connecticut work in financial services, earning an average salary of $146,288.
They held 7.5 percent of all state jobs last year, far higher than the 4.7 percent nationally. That doesn’t include the state’s 11,000 financial commuters to Manhattan.
That concentration exposes Connecticut in a downturn, Steven P. Lanza, editor of The Connecticut Economy, warned officials at the Capitol last week. “Connecticut will probably be one of the hardest hit states the country due to the loss of jobs in financial activities,” he said.
Lanza sees the state’s financial sector losing 30,000 jobs over the next year. But those losses could easily double or triple, he said, if Wall Street’s swoon persists.
