A labor shortage across Connecticut has caused issues as employers are having difficulty finding qualified job applicants, hampering efforts to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, one industry expert said.
Chris DePentima, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said in a statement the state has 41% more job openings than before the pandemic, but over that same period of time more than 45,000 people have left the workforce.
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While Democratic officials met news of Connecticut’s boosted credit rating effusively on Tuesday, Republicans drew attention to new survey results showing on-the-ground feelings about the economy overall aren’t so rosy.
Standard & Poor’s (S&P), a major New York City-based credit-rating agency, assigned the state’s general-obligation bonds a “positive” outlook; before the rating was merely “stable.” S&P attributed its upgrade to the state projecting it will accumulate a $3.31-billion fund balance in the next fiscal year, amounting to 15 percent of appropriations.
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On Friday, Connecticut’s House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting companies’ management from requiring workers to listen to discussions regarding labor organization, politics or religion.
The AFL-CIO, to which more than 200,000 Connecticut workers belong, lauded the move in favor of the policy — known as a “captive audience” restriction — which no other state except Oregon has enacted. Union leaders have denounced the kind of meetings banned by the legislation, complaining that such events are unfairly used to inveigh against union-organization efforts.
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Connecticut’s nine-month job growth streak came to an end with a reported loss of 1,700 private-sector jobs in January.
One industry expert said the loss is reflective of the state’s dealings with the economy in recent years.
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Connecticut’s labor force is shrinking while the number of available jobs continues to rise, one labor expert said.
Chris DiPentima, who serves as president and chief executive officer of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said the state’s labor situation has entered crisis mode.
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Although Connecticut will add 60,000 jobs this year, the state won’t be back to pre-pandemic levels of employment until 2023, industry groups say.
“The inability to grow jobs at the national average or even at the top of the Northeast means that Connecticut’s economy is going to continue to grow slower than the rest of the country and the Northeast,” Chris DiPentima, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, told The Center Square. “The slow job growth means that businesses are not meeting the customer demand that they have. Connecticut, in turn, is not realizing the state’s total economic growth potential. Most businesses are hopeful that the state will put some policies in place to fuel growth and the jobs added each month will increase. This will help recover the jobs that we’ve lost before the end of this year.”
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