Slight rise in employment as of the middle of July

Connecticut gained 26,500 non-farm jobs in July, according to the state Department of Labor.

However, the state has lost about 146,000 non-farm jobs in 2020 overall.

The leisure and hospitality, trade, and “other services” sectors accounted for many of the new jobs. These are sectors that were hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent closures.

The business and professional sector also saw job gains.

The state Department of Labor’s estimated unemployment rate in Connecticut is 10.2% (seasonally adjusted), which is the same as the estimated national unemployment rate. 

But the Department of Labor’s press release notes “the Connecticut unemployment rate continues to be underestimated due to challenges encountered in the collection of data for the July Current Population Survey (CPS).

“In addition to a poor response rate in an already small sample size in Connecticut, key questions continue to be misinterpreted and misclassified. Specifically, a significant number of respondents who should have been classified as temporarily out of work and therefore unemployed were instead classified as employed, but away from work (e.g. sick).”

And just to keep everyone on their toes, the state’s Office of Research figures the state unemployment rate to be more like 15% for the Mid-July period. “This estimate was made using Connecticut residential unemployment insurance claims, adding a similar factor for the unemployed self-employed, and estimating the size of the labor force.”

The state is broken down into Labor Market Areas (LMA).  The six major LMAs are: Hartford, Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, New Haven, Norwich-New London-Westerly, Danbury and Waterbury.

There are three smaller LMAs: Enfield, Danielson-Northeast and Torrington-Northwest.

For July 2020, the Torrington-Northwest data shows a labor force of 47,448, with 43,326 people employed and 4,122 unemployed, for an unemployment rate of 8.7%. (This figure has not been seasonally adjusted.)